 “All Is Vanity,” by Charles Allan Gilbert, Life, vol. 40, no. 1048, 27 Nov. 1902, p. 459. Digitized by Google from the collection of the Harvard University library. On Tuesday morning I managed to set aside some time to read the DfE’s interim curriculum and assessment review. It is a report so seemingly uncontroversial, that even Nick Gibb struggled to find problems with it when interviewed on the Today programme. Yet, as I reflected on it, I found it more and more troubling. I mean, it’s even made me dust off my login and blog for the first time in ages. It’s not so much what the report says, but what remains unsaid that worries me. Let me explain. What is said? On the whole, I found the report to be measured and sensible. There are no sweeping claims about teacher blobs or Marxist teachers destroying the education of children. Nor does it make wild claims about a system in crisis, or the need for radical change. In fact, there is a welcome, if cautious, recognition of the challenges faced by pupils with SEND, and of the need for a slimmed down curriculum, even if it is unclear how these things will be addressed. There were even some nods buried deeper down in the document that there might be some appetite for a broadening of what curriculum entails. There were mentions of the need to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing society and the rise of AI (p27); the need to create “an inclusive and diverse learning experience” for pupils which “needs to do more in ensuring that all young people feel represented…[and] challenge discrimination” (p28); and the need for pupils to “experience a wide range of perspectives” (p29). Barbara Bleiman and Andrew McCallum offer a really helpful analysis of the report for the English and Media Centre. If you have not yet read this, I would really recommend it. What is unsaid? However, just like Bleiman and McCallum, the report also leaves me with the nagging feeling that, for all its caution, the conclusions being drawn are in themselves quite risky because they leave certain concepts, which have become embedded in education discourse over the last decade, under-examined. For example, when talking about future ambitions for curriculum, the report brings out some key Gibb-Gove tropes:
Indeed the concept of ‘mastery’ appears in the document twelve times, with ‘knowledge-rich’ making nine appearance, or twelve if you count the three references to 'cultural capital'. Yet, despite a wealth of discourse around concepts such as ‘powerful knowledge’, ‘mastery’ and ‘knowledge rich’, which have been in the background of so much educational change in the last decade, little is done to question, or even problematise them in this report. This is troubling as these concepts are also closely associated with some deeply flawed framings of education, which attempt to reduce learning to cognitive processes of memory formation - collapsing curriculum purposes and pedagogies into a case of "just tell ‘em", as one prominent edu-blogger once put it. Does it matter? I want to come back to Bleiman and McCallum's blog at this point, as frame the danger lurking below the apparent lack of significant change so well, in addition to their concerns about the lack of focus on oracy, and the problematic references to 'mastery learning'. The commitment to ‘evolution not revolution’ is a worthy one on the face of it. However, there needs to be a recognition that in some areas of curriculum (English being one of them) there are very serious concerns and problems (for example, in relation to the content of the English Language GCSE and its assessment). These may require more than minor tweaks and should be considered at the earliest possible opportunity, to address the issues that have been causing severe damage to the subject and have been shown to be of great concern to teachers, students and universities.
(Bleiman & McCallum, 2025, n.p.) From a history perspective, I have a very similar range of concerns. As the Schools History Project have long argued, really great school history can:
However, current interpretations of concepts like 'mastery' and 'knowledge rich', continue to form significant barriers to achieving these aims. Issues with the concept of ‘mastery’ The concept of ‘mastery’ finds itself fundamentally at odds with the study of school history. There are certainly aspects of the study of the past which might be mastered: some key tools for exploring the past, such as graphology for example. There are even some modes of thinking historically which might be 'mastered' if you agree with proponents of historical thinking like Sylvester, Shemilt, Lee, Wineburg or Seixas (Lee, 2017; Seixas, 2015; Shemilt, 2010; Sylvester, 1976; Wineburg, 2007). However, in terms of its content, history as a school subject is not one which tends towards clear answers, but rather raises questions and tends towards greater complexity. Even setting out a canon of historical content has proven to be almost impossible over the years the National Curriculum has existed. As I have noted previously, there is no simple formula for deciding which historical content needs to be ‘mastered’, and yet this is exactly how many commentators, and schools, have been interpreting ‘mastery’ in history. As a result, curricula risk being reduced to lists of core substantive content to master in the hope that it might somehow unlock historical understanding. 'Mastery' also implies, and seems to result in, a set of pedagogical approaches focused on the transferring of the knowledge to be mastered to pupils. The major issue is that this tramples all over what good history can and should be doing. Again the Schools History Project have long promoted history which encourages pupils to ask questions and develop their own ideas about the past (and the present through the lens of the past). A core aspect of good school history is developing curiosity and an engagement with a genuine historical puzzle. By contrast, 'mastery’ approaches are too often turning history lessons into a series of propositions for pupils to learn and repeat back in various forms. In this mode, pupil engagement in history means reaching the same conclusions their teachers, or their academy trust leads, have decided upon in advance. There is no real engagement with historical thinking. Fundamentally there is no puzzle to develop pupils' thinking and historical literacy and, as Chris Culpin one observed, “no puzzle, no history.” Issues with ‘knowledge-rich’ ‘Knowledge-rich’ and its strong associations with 'cultural capital' (Hirsch et al., 1988) and ‘powerful knowledge' (Young & Muller, 2010; Young & Lambert, 2014) also raises concerns as an unexamined concept in the curriculum and assessment review. At its core, the idea of a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum has always been an act of virtue signalling from the Gibb-Gove arm of educational reform. Who indeed would suggest the opposite would be desirable? The real questions which do need to be asked, and indeed are being asked in the wider discourse, are about whose knowledge should form that richness and, crucially, for what purposes? Arthur Chapman’s (2021) recent online open access book: ‘Knowing History in Schools’ has a series of chapters by authors addressing these exact issues and is well worth a read. If the concept of 'knowledge-rich' or 'powerful knowledge' is not grappled with, then it continues to risk being reduced to a call to teach a simplistic national narrative (Ford, 2022). ‘Knowledge rich’ much like its counterpart ‘mastery learning’ also ends up focusing attention far too heavily on selection and sequencing of substantive knowledge. Indeed, one of the primary conversations becomes about how best to sequence knowledge at the expense of considering the purposes of that knowledge outside the internal logics of the curriculum. As a result it also leads departments to emphasise pedagogical strategies focused on the transfer of that knowledge, rather than its meaningful integration with pupils wider experiences and understandings. There is a growing body of evidence that, over the last decade, the knowledge demands of curricula have increased, but without a clarity of focus, pupils are increasingly lost in a sea of knowledge acquisition with no sense of the bigger picture of their learning. As one school tells their pupils: each term you will learn 1000 new facts, but the reasons why this should be the case are lost somewhere along the way. Internal inconsistencies ‘Knowledge rich’ and ‘mastery’ also end up being at odds with other priorities for curriculum reform noted in the report. For example, the report does note a desire for more inclusive curriculum content. This could be linked with the ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum, but anecdotal and research evidence from the last decade has shown that, when coupled with the concept of ‘cultural capital’, it ends up narrowing the curriculum instead (Ford, 2022). There is also an interesting potential contradiction when the report notes the need to focus on things like financial or careers knowledge. For many 'knowledge-rich' and 'powerful knowledge' have become synonymous. Yet in defining 'powerful knowledge' Young (2014) notes that it should be distinct from everyday knowledge, something separate and negotiated through academic discourse. For Young then, a curriculum which priorities financial literacy would not necessarily class as 'knowledge-rich' . Equally, there is a large body of research to show that pupils with SEND, and pupils who are disaffected by education benefit from approaches which connect with their existing schemas and understandings of the world, rather than treating them as novices waiting to be filled with knowledge. Maintaining a mastery approach to learning, and ensuring pupils who are currently not fully catered for by-, or alienated from- schools might well be contradictory aims. What next? What is most notable from the curriculum review is that some of the really fundamental challenges to teaching good history in schools are likely to remain under the current government. School history still has a really important role to play for young people, but it will struggle to fulfil this role if we don’t tackle the problematic nature of some of the concepts which continue to dominate curriculum discourse in England. 'Knowledge-rich' and 'mastery' are two such concepts. How will we meet that challenge? Well, that’s a blog for another day! As ever, I would love to know your thoughts about the curriculum review and its implications for history in schools. References
1 Comment
Andreas Körber
3/24/2025 11:38:45 am
Dear Alex Ford, Leave a Reply. |
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