Stuart Physics

In the previous three blogs in this series, I have considered several factors important to curriculum reform, both at a national institutional curriculum level and at the classroom curriculum level of individual teachers.  But how might we go about more effective curriculum reform in the future?

Complexity and expertise

I think it is important for the complexity of curriculum reform to be properly acknowledged by all concerned.  As I described in the previous blog in this series, the processes of teaching and learning are very complex, and therefore the process of agreeing and setting out the frameworks and guidance describing these is also complex.  It is important that those tasked with designing the ‘policy curriculum’ and ‘programmatic curriculum’ which make up the ‘institutional curriculum’, see the second of this series of blogs for definitions of these, have the right range of knowledge, skills, experiences and perspectives to do this.  Too often in the past, the voice of classroom teachers has not been sufficiently loud or valued in this process (Muir, 2022).  In addition, when consultations on proposals have been conducted, insufficient time and opportunity have been provided for busy teachers to properly consider these, or to have the rationale behind the proposed changes properly explained to them by their architects (Hayward, 2023).  Protecting more time for such interactions will help develop improved two-way communication between the policy and teaching communities and a better shared understanding of the purpose and intended outcomes of any curriculum reform giving longer term benefits for all.

Teacher input to curriculum reform

An important challenge for Scottish education as it embarks on another period of curriculum reform is therefore how it empowers teachers to display agency and to develop the critical transformative form of teacher professionalism which is already written into policy in documents such as the GTCS Professional Standards (GTCS, 2021a, 2021b). Teachers will need this to engage fully with the curriculum reform process.  Teachers also need time to input into the production of the institutional curriculum as well as to their classroom curriculum.  Teachers should also be trusted and their expertise in teaching and experience of what happens in classrooms to be properly recognised. We need research and evidence informed teachers who feel empowered to have a strong voice in curriculum policymaking at national, cluster, school and classroom levels.  They also need to be empowered to contribute to the collaborative production of high-quality textbooks and other teaching materials which can then provide a strong, common base from which all teachers can build in their own classrooms.  To develop and iteratively evolve and improve these needs well facilitated opportunities for collaborative working and the networking of teachers working in similar subjects, stages, contexts etc. 

Too often existing networks result in ‘contrived collegiality’ rather than genuine collaborative working. Providing a room for an afternoon a term, and a flask of coffee if they are lucky, for just one physics teacher from each secondary school across a local authority to meet in is not sufficient to ensure effective collaboration and is just as likely to result in a ‘greetin meetin’ which proves unsatisfactory for all, although perhaps cathartic for some. The ineffectiveness of such arrangements will be further compounded if the one representative from each school is not given time to share any useful learning with colleagues when they return to their school. This is not the way to create a culture of collaborative professionalism. For improvement, teachers need to receive genuine support rather than scrutiny from the meso-level in Scottish education, and to have opportunities for effective professional learning which actually meets their needs and is focused on improving the instructional core in classrooms rather than spending time on the receiving end of transmissive activities or on activities which waste time and/or drive performativity. 

This then begs the question of what sorts of structures need to be put in place to enable curriculum reform and the production of effective starter teaching materials.  Too often in the past, those tasked with the fleshing out of the programmatic curriculum have been too disconnected from those who formulated the policy curriculum.  A good example of this was that those who sat on the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Curriculum Review Group (Curriculum Review Group, 2004) were then not involved in the production of subsequent CfE guidance or SQA specifications.  This clearly created opportunities for those tasked with writing such programmatic curriculum documents to interpret the ideals set out in the policy curriculum in a different way to that intended by its writers.  The OECD’s reviews of CfE have reported that this resulted in a lack of a clear narrative and a disconnect between different parts of the system, not least between the Broad General Education and Senior Phases of the curriculum (OECD, 2015, 2021).  Before considering how things might be taken forward in the future, I will summarise some examples of what has occurred in the past.

Past curriculum reform

After the two reports by Munn and Dunning which set out the policy curriculum, for the Standard Grade reforms in the 1980s, a group of experts drafted the arrangements for each subject. Subject-specific Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Education (HMIe), who had a reasonably good overview of activity in their subject nationally, had an significant oversight and steering role in these developments. This was again the case with the Higher Still reforms in the 1990s when the HMIe as a whole were then accused of having too great an influence on developments.  For Standard Grade, extensive starter resources were then produced with different regional education authorities taking the lead on different topics with regional subject advisors playing a key coordinating role for each.  For Higher Still fewer resources were produced but this was done more centrally through the Higher Still Development Unit with more limited input from the now thirty-two unitary local authorities which had by then largely lost their subject-specific support staff.  The 5-14 developments in the 1990s did not benefit from such comprehensive support programmes, much to the annoyance of many primary teachers at the time, although a few local authorities produced materials, some of which were then sold to others.  It has certainly been my experience that both the programmatic curriculum and the teaching resources produced for Standard Grade were seen to be the most successful and useful by teachers.  Unfortunately, the voluminous programmatic curriculum documentation produced for CfE lacked clarity and consistency and, in a more financially challenging environment after the 2008 financial crash, CfE was not supported by any similar programme of coordinated, collaborative resource development.  Much of the subject-specific capacity of national and more local agencies had already been lost leaving teachers around the country to work more autonomously in parallel to ‘reinvent the wheel’.  As I described in the first blog in this series, this was done within what I consider to be a largely misguided culture of misinterpreting what is meant by personalisation and had the consequence of greatly increasing the workload of teachers whilst producing many resources likely to be less than optimal.  We need to do better in the future.

Future curriculum reform

For success in the future, it is important that a stronger teacher voice is involved in developing the top-level policy curriculum.  Only two Headteachers and one Principal Teacher were included in the nineteen members of the CfE Curriculum Review Group.  Any similar future group must also consult meaningfully and widely with the teaching profession and the teaching profession must be facilitated, and prepared, to engage with all consultations.  Time to do so must be provided.  Development groups will then need to be set up for different curriculum areas to then develop the programmatic curriculum. These should consider assessment as well as curriculum content to ensure they are well matched and include workable proposals that do not increase teacher workload or pupil stress.  It is important that the right people are recruited on to these.  This ought to include academics and researchers with curriculum knowledge, and people like me who work for ‘third sector’ subject professional organisations who have also been afforded time and space to think about curriculum and teaching of their subject, as well as teachers and lecturers with good knowledge and experience in the relevant area.  We need to draw on the expertise of those from the classroom but also on those knowledgeable about research and more academic work in curriculum-making, assessment and certification as well as those with a ‘big picture’ overview of the reform process.  Universities have an important role in bringing expertise from different sectors together and connecting with international research and perspectives.  A good example of how this can be done is the University of Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making (SCRCM, n.d.).

Unfortunately, without the sorts of people lost to the system in recent decades, like subject advisors in local authorities and many subject-specific staff in Education Scotland, I fear the system’s ability to identify who the ‘right people’ to develop the programmatic curriculum are, particularly those who are classroom-based, is compromised compared to the 1980s and 1990s.  Many of these right people will also be the right people to lead groups to then write curriculum support materials.  This will help ensure that the philosophy and rationale underpinning the institutional curriculum will be reflected in further guidance and support materials. The people involved will need time to do this work.  There may be a role for commercial publishers in resource production provided they can be convinced to work on more extended timescales than has often been the case in the past. I would argue that it is in their interests that good quality resources are produced as they will then be adopted by many.  It may also be sensible to adopt or adapt already well-developed resources we already have in Scotland and from elsewhere.  I think that too often in the past, Scotland has been overly insular in its approach to development in education.  Subjects such as mathematics and physics do not change fundamentally at the borders between countries, so just as teachers across Scotland should not be ‘reinventing wheels’ nor should we as a country if we can draw on good work from elsewhere.

We need to ensure in any new reforms we take account of the modern context in which we find ourselves and the technological progress which has been made.  However, the core knowledge and skills necessary for young people to navigate the world are largely the same as they always were and are built on having a good foundation of literacy and numeracy and a good knowledge of the ‘big ideas’ across the sciences, technological subjects, social subjects, and the arts.  The effective teaching of reading and numeracy in the early years and primary is especially important as this opens up so many other opportunities for learning, the enjoyment of doing so, and therefore the motivation to do more. With such a base, and a good general vocabulary from the study of other subjects, then young people will be well placed for further study and able to develop the higher-order skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking in a broad range of contexts and therefore adapt easily to further developments in technology and society.  There is also a strong social justice element to this issue.  I would argue that one of the most significant purposes of schools is to expose children and young people to knowledge and experiences which they may not have the opportunity to experience elsewhere.  This is most important for those from disadvantaged backgrounds where their parents, carers and other key influencers may not have the capital of those from more advantaged backgrounds. There is a danger of unintentionally restricting the opportunities and ambitions of learners by setting teaching and learning too much in the context and preferences of the learners as some ‘student-centred’ approaches have done in the past.  A well designed knowledge-based curriculum is of greatest benefit to the most disadvantaged and can play a very important part in closing the poverty related attainment gap, which of course can only be truly addressed if poverty is properly dealt with.

In the review which essentially began this latest round of educational reform in Scotland, the OECD made several recommendations which still require addressing (OECD, 2021).  Their first recommendation stated that the core vision of CfE should be updated in particular with regard to the role of knowledge in the curriculum.  They went on to describe how a curriculum should provide clarity about what learners should be expected to do, know and understand.  It is essential this issue is addressed properly.  The groups responsible for producing any future programmatic curriculum guidance should have this at the forefront of their thinking and ensure the expected knowledge of the big ideas in each subject area is clearly described for the benefit of the teachers using these documents and their learners.  Clearly defined core knowledge in each subject at each stage will help facilitate pupil progression and continuity across transitions between years and stages and help facilitate improved collaborative, enquiry-based professional learning amongst teachers working to improve the teaching of this more clearly defined core curriculum. 

The OECD also recommended that there should be a systematic curriculum review cycle, of perhaps eight to ten years.  If a suitable expert group were to now review each curriculum area and provide a refreshed programmatic curriculum, a period of around eight years would then allow for a planned programme of research and evidence gathering which could then inform future curriculum reforms in a very meaningful way.  The knowledge that there would be some curriculum stability for around eight years would also allow for programmes of research-based teaching resource development such as that by Haagen-Schützenhöfer (2017) I described in the second of this series of blogs and perhaps make it more worthwhile for commercial publishers and others to engage with such work.

Much that I have discussed in this series of blogs covers issues identified in other OECD recommendations which have yet to be addressed fully:

• Building curricular capacity at various levels of the system using research
• Ensuring stable, purposeful and impactful stakeholder involvement with CfE
• Revision of the division of responsibility for CfE
• Providing dedicated time to lead, plan and support CfE at school level
• Simplify policies and institutions for clarity and coherence.

It is over three years since the OECD report and there is still much to be done to address its recommendations (OECD, 2021).

The Scottish education system must also be better prepared to learn lessons from the past, such as why aspects of the Standard Grade and Higher Still reforms proved to be more successful than the National Qualifications of CfE.  There is therefore a need to ensure that those with knowledge of previous reforms can feed into future ones to help ensure mistakes are not repeated. It is also instructive to look at systems abroad, not to simplistically ‘policy borrow’ but to delve more deeply into understanding why some educations systems prove to be more successful in some areas than others.  I stated at the beginning of this blog that curriculum reform is complex.  It is therefore important that ‘silver bullets’ are not sought or ‘bandwagons’ jumped upon. Too often policymakers, and indeed teacher leaders and teachers themselves, have too readily looked to such solutions to solve a complex long term problem.  The role of empowered, research and evidence informed, critically engaged, enquiring professionals is absolutely central to ensure such traps are avoided.  Empowered, agentic professionals from both teaching and academic backgrounds should be able to challenge the status quo, to challenge those with vested interests within the existing system, and to challenge those promoting poorly evidenced, simplistic, or overly bureaucratic and unworkable solutions to what are complex problems. As a country we need to be able to have open and honest discussions about how we improve education and not be silenced or restricted by a culture of compliance (Bhattacharya, 2021; Humes, 2021).

In conclusion

In Scotland, in the last few years, we have turned reviewing and consulting on education into something of a national obsession.  For school education we have had the OECD (twice), Stobart, Muir, the National Discussion, and Hayward (Campbell & Harris, 2023; Hayward, 2023; Muir, 2022; OECD, 2015, 2021; Stobart, 2021) and more.  More broadly we have also had Withers (2023), The Purposes and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills (Scottish Government, 2023) and annex B of the recent Post-School Education and Skills Reform consultation (Scottish Government, 2024) lists nine other reviews which have been conducted since 2018.  Cynics might accuse the Scottish Government of using these reviews as a means of being seen to be doing something but in effect to be just ‘kicking the can down the road’.  In places they appear to have put the ‘cart before the horse’ by announcing structural change before consideration has been given to the purpose of the new structures, and to conduct several reviews in parallel with each other clearly opens opportunities for a lack of coherence between them.  I think it is abundantly clear that it is now time for action rather than consultation and review.  However, for this action to be meaningful and effective it is now important that the right curriculum-making structures with the right blend of people are put in place.  These people then need to be given the time and resources required to do the job, and to be trusted to use their expertise to get on and do what they consider best.

As I stated I would at the beginning of the first blog in this series of four, I have used them to surface some of my thinking on the topics included and I hope they are a useful contribution to support discussion and policy-making on how best to progress curriculum reform in Scotland, and perhaps beyond too. Our children and young people deserve no less.

References

Bhattacharya, A. (2021). Encouraging innovation and experimentation in Scottish schools. https://www.smf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Innovation-and-experimentation-in-Scottish-schools-March-2021.pdf

Campbell, C., & Harris, A. (2023). All Learners in Scotland Matter: The National Discussion on Education Final Report. https://www.gov.scot/publications/learners-scotland-matter-national-discussion-education-final-report/

Curriculum Review Group. (2004). A curriculum for excellence. https://education-uk.org/documents/pdfs/2004-scottish-curriculum-review

GTCS. (2021a). The Standard for Career-Long Professional Learning: An Aspirational Professional Standard for Scotland’s Teachers. https://www.gtcs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/standard-for-career-long-professional-learning.pdf

GTCS. (2021b). The Standard for Full Registration: Mandatory Requirements for Registration with the General Teaching Council for Scotland. https://www.gtcs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/standard-for-full-registration.pdf

Haagen-Schützenhöfer, C. (2017). Development of research based teaching materials: The learning output of a course for geometrical optics for lower secondary students. Springer Proceedings in Physics, 190, 105–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44887-9_9/FIGURES/3

Hayward, L. (2023). It’s Our Future: Report of the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment. https://www.gov.scot/publications/future-report-independent-review-qualifications-assessment/

Humes, W. (2021). The ‘Iron Cage’ of Educational Bureaucracy. British Journal of Educational Studies, 70(2), 235–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2021.1899129

Muir, K. (2022). Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education. https://www.gov.scot/publications/putting-learners-centre-towards-future-vision-scottish-education/

OECD. (2015). Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective. https://web-archive.oecd.org/temp/2015-12-16/380875-improving-schools-in-scotland.htm

OECD. (2021). Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: Into the Future, Implementing Education Policies. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/scotland-s-curriculum-for-excellence_bf624417-en/full-report.html

Scottish Government. (2023). Purpose and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills. https://www.gov.scot/publications/post-school-education-research-skills-purpose-principles/documents/

Scottish Government. (2024). Post-School Education and Skills Reform: Consultation on legislation. https://www.gov.scot/publications/post-school-education-skills-reform-consultation-legislation/documents/

SCRCM. (n.d.). Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making | About | University of Stirling. Retrieved 5 August 2024, from https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties/social-sciences/our-research/research-groups/stirling-centre-for-research-into-curriculum-making/

Stobart, G. (2021). Upper-secondary education student assessment in Scotland: A comparative perspective. https://doi.org/10.1787/d8785ddf-en

Withers, J. (2023). Fit for the Future: developing a post-school learning system to fuel economic transformation – Skills Delivery Landscape Review – Final Report. https://www.gov.scot/publications/fit-future-developing-post-school-learning-system-fuel-economic-transformation/