Blog Post by Olivia Singleton
I’m pretty sure there are points in every teacher’s career, particularly following a difficult or stressful period, when we question the purpose of our jobs. “What are schools even for?!” we cry, labouring over yet another set of books at 8pm on Sunday evening whilst binging the latest Netflix series (well… maybe that’s just me.) Recently, I’ve found myself constantly mulling over the purpose of schools and the curriculum, wondering how to balance the several spinning plates of Things We Must Do, as well as considering why we do them in the first place.
Recent academic research, alongside various new Ofsted reports, shows that schools are starting to focus on a curriculum immersed in imparting knowledge on a national scale. It has been argued that, in past years, “teachers and pupils [have] focused on more examination outcomes and less on the pedagogic strategies that might facilitate better access to knowledge”. In a bid to combat this, Ofsted want schools to take a “knowledge-rich approach” to the curriculum: gone are the days of 5 year GCSE’s and the overwhelming exam focus that goes with it, to be replaced with the “invaluable knowledge” that we “want pupils to know.”
For me, this change is fantastic. It encourages agency on various levels, from whole school, to departments and to individual teachers, it is much more holistic and “enriching” for students, and it encourages teachers to reflect on and adapt their pedagogical approaches. Whilst this left me feeling confident in terms of what we were teaching and why, I was left with one final question: how do I effectively impart this vital knowledge in a way the students will understand and remember? I wanted to experiment with ways to utilise the Learning Principles so that I was not simply reduced to a “transmitter of knowledge” in the classroom, but rather a facilitator of understanding.
The first technique I tried was centred around challenging students to use their own cultural capital to grasp new concepts and/or ideas. I tried to draw links with TV shows, celebrities, and local news in an attempt to make my explanations clearer, comprehensible and relatable. For instance when introducing Year 7 to pathetic fallacy in English, we explored how Disney films use the weather to convey the character’s emotion and/or the tone of the scene. The visual prompt and familiarity of the plot helped them to understand and then employ a literary device which they had been struggling with previously.
At times, this method can be laborious and time consuming (don’t spend 15 minutes trying to find the perfect clip of the fight scene from Lion King like I did during planning), and also requires a relatively broad knowledge of the students in each class. Despite these drawbacks, this method seems to allow for a deeper understanding of new concepts, whilst simultaneously cementing new information into long term memory alongside the information that they have already processed in the past. As long as the task is specific, and leads on to some class modelling and FIT – so that the students can consolidate the concept(s) into their own work – I found this to be a huge success.
I also experimented with “the glorification of struggle”. Accidentally, I discovered that my top set Year 9 students always seemed to remember the information that they’d had to figure out independently, rather than the things I’d told them during the course of the lesson. I started to experiment with this when planning, restricting the information I gave the students and instead using questioning to elicit suggestions until we reached the correct explanation. In practise, I found that this challenged HAPs as it gave them the space to explore more complex concepts and ideas, whilst encouraging all students to think for themselves. Students seemed less afraid of being wrong, and thus began to share interesting and original thoughts which prompted several excellent discussions. With LAPs, I used pictures rather than words to help scaffold understanding, sometimes writing basic questions to help prompt students to think of a response. With some practise (and some emergency key words if things aren’t going to plan), this has become a really useful way to both engage and encourage students.
In short, I’ve realised that employing a knowledge-led curriculum is much more beneficial for both staff and students, and that experimenting with ways of imparting knowledge can lead to great discoveries!
