Where have progression models in history gone wrong?
The dominant approach at present to defining progression in learning history is to make use of ‘disciplinary’ or ‘second-order’ concepts such as ‘causation’, [...]
Knowledge and curriculum
A curriculum sets out what pupils ought to learn, and there is thus a fundamental connection between knowledge and curriculum. Most of my posts on this blog have focused on the nature of academic knowledge, why this is central to school curricula, and how this knowledge might be structured within a curriculum model.
Have you taught it? The problem of the list curriculum
One of the problems of the various iterations of the National Curriculum is that the statements they included were very broad and open to interpretation. This is true of the [...]
Should teaching methods be prescribed?
Arendt’s observation that ‘the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution’ is pertinent in a number of contexts, and we can see [...]
Helping children understand the Age of Trump
Every now and then I write a post in which I look at current affairs and ask the question “what does someone need to know to make sense of this all?” I wrote a similar [...]
Knowledge: independently necessary or collectively sufficient?
I have a little game for you to play today, and you must do as I tell you. Read each of the following sentences and, at the end of each one, either shrug your shoulders and [...]
“Use all the sources and your own knowledge”: is it time to move on?
I have written a few times now that I think we need a radical change in how we set source-based questions in exams. Some relevant earlier posts are Less generic analysis and [...]
Less generic analysis and more case studies: teaching about sources in schools
I have written in this blog on a few occasions how I think source-based questions in schools need to change. Although we have come a long way from the horrors of 1990s [...]
Furnishing the abstract with the specific: teaching disciplinary practice
Curriculum theory is hard, for it asks us to take something very complex (such as an academic discipline) and to define it, give it structure and tease out its properties. [...]
To describe, to explain, to justify: a satirical farce
PLEASE NOTE: the events set out below are fictional. Any similarity to a discussion at a meeting of GCSE examiners is purely coincidental. Teacher 1: Now are we all clear [...]
Vague verbs: a curricular problem
This is slightly complex post on an issue on which I have not fully reached my own conclusions. I do however think that it outlines a deep problem in curriculum theory, and [...]
Can children learn to challenge authority?
Genericism is rife in the educational world and it takes many forms. One of its basic tenets is that the generic things we learn can easily be transferred from one domain to [...]
Speaking truth to power
I awoke this morning to see that Cambridge Professor Mary Beard had been in an argument on Twitter with UKIP donor Arron Banks. Banks had claimed that immigration into [...]
Are there things that all children need to know?
In mathematics and (to an extent) in the natural sciences there is not a huge amount of debate as to what ought to populate a curriculum. The greater debate, particularly in [...]
Against the generic use of sources in history lessons
I have written before about some of the difficulties involved in getting pupils to act as ‘mini-historians’. Historians go into archives to work with sources forearmed [...]
On mountains and great conversations: the importance of knowing a little about a lot
As some readers of this blog might know, I am a keen hillwalker and mountaineer and I spend many happy days each year wandering over the Lake District fells, bagging Scottish [...]
The long road to critical reading: against the ‘quick-fix’
‘Fake news’ sites are very much in the public eye at the moment, but commentators for many years have noted that school pupils often struggle to be critical about what [...]
The knowledge party in my head
When I was in Year 7, my maths teacher got us to calculate the number of possible unique handshakes in a group of people. We learnt that the number of handshakes in a group [...]
Clio et cetera 