Today’s post is by Elsa Lee (with inspiration from Paul Vare, Alex Catallo, the consortium of collaborators working on the Curriculum for a Changing Climate project, Teach the Future, and SOS-UK). Elsa is NAEE’s deputy director. In the post she writes about the recent track change research for Teach the Future which saw key national curriculum documentation re-worked with sustainability in mind. As ever with our blogs, the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the Association.
Something that I have been pondering for some time about schooling and curricula is how the child navigates different subjects at the secondary level, bringing all the disparate ideas together in their embodied mind, as they grow. While the subjects are siloed, in the child they come together. A metaphor that helps me to think about that (perhaps inspired by something that Alan Reid wrote some twenty years ago) is one of those packs of embroidery that you find in sewing shops in unfrequented corners of towns across the country. In this analogy the National Curriculum would be the fabric with a black and white printed image (in this case of the socially and academically qualified child) on it. The teachers and their pedagogy would be those beautifully coloured threads that offer meaning to the image, and the child would be the embroiderer, taking the threads to the fabric, and bringing the image to life. Some (very few) children would stick rigidly to the lines, using the threads exactly as they were designed and would come out with exactly the image that was printed on the fabric, in the exact colours that were intended. Other children would stick to some lines and colours but in other places would miss things out completely, or would add extra unexpected flowers or kittens or (electric) motorbikes to the picture, born out of their own experience of the world and how it is changing. Some other children would completely abstract the process, turning it inside out and upside down but arriving at the end with something new and wonderful and perfect in its own way. In other words, each child makes the use of the curriculum that they can. There is no amount of policy and mandating that can stop the child from making the curriculum their own. Even the child that does exactly what they are asked to do does this because that is what suits their approach to the world. What matters then is not whether the child achieves exactly the right pattern or not. What matters is whether the embroidery pattern and embroidery thread we provide leaves them with something that is useful when they enter the wider world beyond the schools (while at school or when they finish school) prepared to address the challenges they will undoubtedly face. It is critical that our pattern is useful and usable and adaptable in the contemporary moment, and this has not always been the case. Curriculum must change with the changing times.
In working on the Curriculum for a Changing Climate funded by Teach the Future (about which more can be read here: The Launch of Curriculum for a Changing Climate (teachthefuture.uk) I have been able to look at the specification for 8 of the National Curriculum subjects at Key Stage 3 and 4, and this has brought home to me just how useful our curriculum is, as it stands. It truly has been designed to be flexible. It provides that image and the coloured thread, as you might hope, but the design is open and invites teachers to bring their own shades and tones to it. Paul Vare, Alex Catallo and I set out on this curriculum project with the expectation of making wholesale and transformational change. Working with a team of 40 academics and teachers, experienced in particular subjects, we expected to hand over a considerably changed document. However, what we ended up with really is not all that different to what was already there. In some subjects (like Science) we made suggestions for how the curriculum could be exemplified with cases that highlight sustainability and the human responses to the climate emergency; and we emphasised the need to think about implications of different scientific principles. In other subjects like Art and Design we focused on the use of sustainable materials; in other subjects like History (a subject which is particularly serious about allowing teachers to determine the content) we added the theme of Environment. Our pattern is very much inspired by the original, shifting lines here and there, bringing the trees and grass forward and pushing the factories and powerplants back a little. It is perhaps so similar that only the discerning reader will spot the changes (so we printed them in red and bold to make them clear).
To initiate this project, we drew on the expertise of the aforementioned group to create principles for a curriculum that takes the environmental emergency seriously. As Paul has noted, these principles are very much in line with others that have emerged from the field of environmental education and sustainability education over the past 5 decades. That is testament to the constancy of what is considered best and effective practice in this space. However, there is something fresh in them that was very much inspired by the tireless efforts of the young people at Teach the Future and SOS-UK whose central aim is to ensure that children leave school (each day, and when they finish school and move on into further and higher education or the world of work) feeling empowered to contribute to solving the ecological crises we are all facing.
We offered these up to Teach the Future as conversation starters in the hopes that they will be seen as living documents that will prove useful to subject associations and government agencies working on what must surely soon be a (re)revised National Curriculum, that, in Alex’s words, will be one that evokes environmental regeneration and social justice as its emergent property.
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If you missed the launch webinar, you can watch the recording online, view the full report, read the revised curricula for the subjects, or check out the executive summary. Elsa can be contacted at: eul20@homerton.cam.ac.uk