The Curriculum as a Narrative

As Christine Counsell defines: "Curriculum is content structured as narrative over time". Thinking in narrative terms will help classroom teachers and SLT to communicate about curriculum.

Narratives

Narratives are stories told in the shape of dynamic relationships over time. This can be said about movies, novels and even music.
The dynamic interactions between each piece of content are what makes the whole thing understandable and memorable.
- For example, information revealed at the beginning of a novel will be important to understand the plot twist near the end. The early theme played in a symphony works as the baseline for us to be able to appreciate later variations.

Schemas

The narratives are understandable because it interplays what is familiar and what is novel to us. These two definitions are only possible if we have early reference points.
From a cogntive science point of view, we can think about schemas. That is, the network of prior knowledge that we have secured in our long-term memory and that allows our limited working memory to make sense and process novel information.

Proximal and ultimate functions

A good curriculum is the one able to connect all pieces of content taught over time in a coherent way.
Each thing covered in class needs to have a function in the narrative and be interconnected with what came before and what will come afterwards.
Each piece of content has two functions:
- Proximal: how it makes the very next learning stage possible.
- Ultimate: how it will help future learning to happen, even if pupils do not explicitly see the connection.

Core and hinterland

Counsell says these are the most helpful terms when thinking about curriculum.
The core is the knowledge that is committed to memory and that we use for a long time.
The hinterland may not be the essential piece of knowledge, but it is as important for learning.
Example: We can understand a novel by reading a summary of the plot and a few analyses about their meaning. However, only by actually reading the book, we will be able to fully retain the core information.

Hinterland

A well-defined hinterland content needs to have a well-defined proximal function.
Hinterland content is not simply making learning "fun" or "engaging" per se. It is building up to the core knowledge in a way that fully helps that piece of content to be learned.

Indirect Manifestation of Content Learned

According to Christine Counsell, teaching to a test is damaging to the curriculum, to learning and, especially, to disadvantaged pupils.

Teaching to the test

Public examinations, like GCSE and A-Levels, are a proxy for the wide curriculum.
It is a mistake to teach only the topics in the exam specification.
- When this is done, not only we lose the narrative element of the curriculum, but we also stop disadvantaged pupils of gathering the knowledge that will help them in life.

Skills

According to Counsell and David Thomas, many of the skills necessary to succeed in the national exams cannot be taught directly.
- They need to be taught indirectly over time and in different contexts.
This is because practising a skill in isolation and with a short-term goal is not effective. Just like practising scales over and over again is not enough to be able to play a recital.

Indirect knowledge

It is important to recognise how indirect knowledge benefits not only learning as a whole, but also exam performance.
In Counsell's blog, she mentions a paper by Kate Hammond, who researched pupils learning GCSE History.
In that study, it was noted that even though two answers would be given the same marks in the exam, they were not of the same quality. There were subtle differences in sentence structure and word choice that made it clear which student had truly learned the tested content.

Indirect knowledge

The researcher concluded that:
- The students with lower-quality answers had been taught each topic in isolation and made to practice exam skills in isolation.
- The students with higher-quality answers were the ones that had build solid schemas based on a wider History curriculum. The knowledge, vocabulary, and analytical skills they picked up from a coherent curriculum were indirectly helping them to feel comfortable and confident in their answers.

1Important Educational Researchers Currently

1.1Interesting Current Educational Researchers

1.1.1Mary Myatt

1.1.2Daisy Christodoulou

1.1.3Alex Quigley

1.1.4David Didau

2How to Have an Evidence-Informed Classroom

2.1How to Have an Evidence-Informed Classroom

2.1.16 Steps by the Evidence Based Teachers Network

2.1.23 Steps by the George W. Bush’s Institute

2.1.35 Steps by the University of Birmingham

3Interleaving

3.1Optimum Interleaving

3.1.1Optimum Interleaving

4Curriculum

4.1Cognitive Sciences and SEND

4.1.1Cognitive Sciences and SEND

4.2Curriculum Design

4.2.1Curriculum Design

4.3Christine Counsell: Senior Curriculum Leadership

4.3.1What is Senior Curriculum Leadership

4.3.2The Curriculum as a Narrative

5Future Questions

5.1Future Questions

5.1.1Future Questions

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