What makes a curriculum ‘knowledge-rich’?
The terms ‘knowledge-based curriculum’ and ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ have become increasingly popular, particularly amongst educational [...]
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.
Genericism and the crisis of curriculum
What follows below is a talk I gave to the British Curriculum Forum event on Saturday 18th June 2016. Generally the talk was well-received, even amongst those who disagreed [...]
How do we teach when it’s possible our students might die?
This blog is a copy of a comment I made in response to Sue Cowley who commented on this post about having a content repertoire. She suggested that maybe learning to walk in [...]
Can we find out ‘what works’?
Consider the following three statements: “Converting secondary schools to academies improve GCSE attainment”. “Peer coaching is an effective form of teacher CPD .” [...]
The importance of a ‘content repertoire’
I am rather hoping that you might, for this blog post, permit me a slightly extended analogy.I have spent a lot of my free time in the last fifteen years in mountains. I [...]
Schools as the intellectual heart of the community
Although some readers of this blog might assume that I attended a fancy independent school in London, I am in fact the product of a rural comprehensive school on the [...]
Getting children to care about Syria
When faced with suffering, it is a very natural thing to respond with a range of emotions. Children might lack emotional maturity (whatever that means), but they too [...]
The danger of dressing up our subjects as something else
One of the saddest things I see (and have done) in schools is the dressing up of our subjects so that they look like something else. Take Tudor England. The stories that [...]
Better at reading *what*?
I read Heather’s blog post about problems with the EEF with some interest yesterday, not least because I have also been frequently dissatisfied with the kinds of studies [...]
What are our pupils reading?
It has long been recognised that ‘literacy’ is not simply the responsibility of the English department in school. Most of the discussion surrounding reading in recent [...]
How to choose a good teacher training course
If you are someone who is thinking about applying for teacher training this year, then this blog post is for you! Similarly, if you know someone thinking about going into [...]
In defence of DVDs?
It’s that time of year again. “Have you planned your Year 9 lesson for today?” “Yes: insert DVD, then press play”. Quite rightly, teachers who decide to sit out the [...]
On not losing the ‘what’ in the ‘how’
I followed an interesting discussion on Twitter this week where David Didau lampooned a resource given to @MissNQT at a NQT training event. The resource advocated a variety [...]
Senior leaders and the school curriculum
School senior leaders, I would argue, ought to be taking a keen interest in the detail of the school curriculum, not least because that curriculum helps to define what the [...]
Be not afeared: criticality and the teaching of history
I suspect most readers will have seen the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. One of the early parts of the performance involved our green and pleasant land being [...]
Want to improve your teaching? Study the teaching of your subject
What makes someone a good writer? There are various guides out there and one of the more famous is the list of rules in George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English [...]
The merits of the academic disciplines
Following discussions last week and over the weekend, I’ve decided to write a few posts setting out in more detail the philosophy that underpins my approach to the [...]
Clio et cetera 