What Should Schools Teach?: Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth

KNOWLEDGE AND THE CURRICULUM

Series editors

Arthur Chapman, Cosette Crisan, Jennie Golding and Alex Standish, UCL Institute of Education

The series promotes research, theorizing and critical discussion about what we teach in schools and in teacher education. It explores the nature of knowledge in contemporary societies, academic disciplines, school subjects and other fields of knowledge production, to foster inquiry into the relationships that can and should exist between knowledge-disciplines in schools and elsewhere.

Knowledge and the Curriculum aims to become a central hub for investigation into how disciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity can enable schools, teacher trainers and learners to address the challenges of the twenty-first century in knowledgeable and critically informed ways. The series explores questions about the powers of knowledge, relationships between the distribution of knowledge and knowledge resources in society, and matters of equity in access to justice and democratization. It is committed to the proposition that the answers to questions about knowledge require new thinking and innovation. These are open questions with answers that are not already known, and which are likely to entail significant social and institutional change to make the powers of knowledge and of knowing equally available to all.

The series emerged from the Subject Specialism Research Group at the UCL Institute of Education and a major international network of curriculum theorists (KOSS) centred around research groups in Karlstad (ROSE) and Helsinki (HuSoEd). It draws upon the expertise of all three research groups for its editors and advisory board.

Series advisers

Gabriel Bladh, University of Karlstad

Zongyi Deng, UCL Institute of Education

Jan Derry, UCL Institute of Education

Niklas Gerrike, University of Karlstad

Brian Hudson, University of Sussex

David Lambert, UCL Institute of Education

Christina Olin-Scheller, University of Karlstad

Eero Salmenkivi, University of Helsinki

Sirpa Tani, University of Helsinki

Michael Young, UCL Institute of Education

First published in 2021 by

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Sehgal Cuthbert, A. and Standish, A. (eds.) (2021) What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth. 2nd ed. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787358744

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ISBN: 978-1-78735-876-8 (Hbk)

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787358744

Contents

List of figures

List of abbreviations

Notes on contributors

Foreword

Tim Oates

Introduction to the second edition

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish

1 Disciplinary knowledge and its role in the school curriculum

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert

2 School subjects

Alex Standish

3 English literature

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert

4 Art

Dido Powell

5 Drama

Martin Robinson

6 Music

Simon Toyne

7 Foreign languages

Shirley Lawes

8 Geography

Alex Standish

9 History

Christine Counsell

10 Religious education

Rania Hafez

11 Biology

Fredrik Berglund and Michael J. Reiss

12 Chemistry

Gareth Bates

13 Physics

Gareth Sturdy

14 Mathematics

Cosette Crisan

Conclusion

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish

Index

List of figures

1.1 Hierarchical knowledge structures within vertical discourse (Martin et al., 2010, 438; reproduced by permission)

1.2 Structure of knowledge progress in aesthetics (image by the author)

2.1 The didactic triangle (Hudson, 2014)

4.1 The Virgin and Child from the Pisa Polyptych, Masaccio, 1426, panel 134.8 × 73.5 cm (Reproduced by permission of the National Gallery, London)

4.2 The Death of Sardanapalus, Delacroix, 1827, 392 × 496 cm (Reproduced by permission of the Louvre, Paris)

4.3 Still Life with Chair Caning, Picasso, 1912, 27 × 35 cm (Musée National Picasso, Paris. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2017. Reproduced by permission)

6.1 A musical school (Rogers, 2019)

6.2 The relationship between practice and musical grade (Sloboda et al., 1996, 300. Reproduced by permission of Wiley)

6.3 A model of learning for KS3 Music, Hampshire Music Service (Rogers, 2015)

8.1 Conceptualizing systematic and regional geography (image by the author)

8.2 Sub-disciplines of systematic geography and their relationship to regional geography (Nijman et al., 2020)

14.1 Pascal’s triangle (image by the author)

List of abbreviations

Notes on contributors

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert presented an argument for a progressive case for a liberal subject-based education for a PhD (Cantab.) in sociology and philosophy of education. She has worked in education for over 20 years as an English teacher at secondary level and lecturer in cultural studies in higher education. She currently works part-time as an English teacher for the educational charity Civitas. She writes on educational issues for academic and public audiences. Her research interests include social realist epistemology, aesthetics and the pedagogy of reading and English literature. Sehgal Cuthbert has contributed to the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers’ publication, The Role of the Teacher Today, and has recently published articles on English in The Curriculum Journal and English in Education. She is a school governor and sits on Ofsted’s advisory panel for the new inspection framework for English. She is a committee member of the Cambridge Symposium of Knowledge in Education and a member of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

Alex Standish is Associate Professor of Geography Education at the UCL Institute of Education and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He works in teacher training and supervises students at master’s and doctoral level. He taught geography and other subjects in both primary and secondary schools in the south of England. He completed his doctoral degree in geography at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and then taught at Western Connecticut State University for six years. Standish has provided curriculum guidance for the Department for Education, the Department for International Trade, the London Mayor’s office, examination boards and schools. He has single-authored two books including Global Perspectives in the Geography Curriculum: Reviewing the moral case for geography.

Gareth Bates is Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education at the University of Bedfordshire, where he is responsible for the management of the PGCE secondary science course. Prior to this, he was a secondary school science teacher with Head of Faculty responsibilities. Bates holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Southampton and an MChem in chemistry from the University of York. He now conducts research into science education and his main areas of interest are science teacher education, professional identity and science curriculum design.

Fredrik Berglund studied biomedical sciences in Sweden before moving to Scotland to do a PhD in biochemistry and cancer cell biology. He worked as a post-doctoral researcher in breast cancer research laboratories both at the University of Dundee and at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is currently a biology teacher at the East London Science School.

Christine Counsell is an independent education consultant. She previously held positions in comprehensive schools as Head of History, deputy head teacher, local authority adviser and senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education where she ran the PGCE for history. From 2016 to 2018, she was Director of Education of the Inspiration Trust, a multi-academy trust in East Anglia. An editor of Teaching History since 1998, Counsell has published widely on curriculum, teaching and teacher education. She has frequently assisted, since 1994, in drafting England’s National Curriculum for history. She has led training and consultancy, nationally and internationally, for governments, schools, NGOs and universities. From 2017 to 2019, she served on Ofsted’s Curriculum Advisory Group.

Cosette Crisan is a mathematician and a mathematics educator. She taught pure mathematics at university level for 10 years, followed by teaching mathematics in secondary schools in London. She has been a part of the mathematics education programme at the UCL Institute of Education since 2010. Crisan’s main research interest lies in the development of teachers’ professional knowledge base for teaching, the professional development of specialist and non-specialist mathematics teachers and the incorporation of digital technologies in mathematics teaching.

Rania Hafez is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Greenwich where she leads the MA Education programme. She also co-chairs the London Learning and Skills Research Network (LLSRN) and is a fellow of the Muslim Institute. Previously Hafez was Director of Post Compulsory Education at the University of East London. In 2008 she founded ‘Muslim Women in Education’, a professional network for Muslim women educationalists and researchers. In addition to her academic work she is a regular political and cultural commentator in broadcast media and in February 2020 was voted by colleagues and students as one of twelve Inspirational Muslim Women.

Shirley Lawes is an education researcher, consultant and university teacher, specializing in teacher education and modern foreign languages teaching and learning at the UCL Institute of Education. Her PhD research was a comparative study on the decline of educational theory and professional knowledge in initial teacher education. The recent focus of her research and curriculum development work has been on the use of short film in MFL teaching in collaboration with the British Film Institute. Lawes has published widely in both English and French on education policy, teacher education and the teaching of modern foreign languages and is currently writing a book on culture in language teaching. She is also a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques awarded by the French Ministry of Education for her contribution to the promotion of the French language and culture.

Tim Oates is Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment, focusing on national and international research on assessment and measurement. In 2010 he published Could Do Better, which laid down the principles for the review of the National Curriculum in England. He was chair of the Expert Panel for Review of the National Curriculum in England. Emerging from this review, subsequent research on the quality and function of textbooks and other resources has been taken up around the world and discussed at two international summits on learning resources. He chairs various curriculum groups for the Department for Education in England. He has published widely on assessment and curriculum issues and routinely provides briefings and advice to the UK and other governments. He has worked with OECD on curriculum matters and is leading a new UNICET project on a curriculum framework for displaced children. He is a fellow of Churchill College Cambridge and in 2015 received a CBE for services to education.

Dido Powell is a painter and a teacher of art history, visual studies and art. She has taught for 35 years in higher education on art and design courses, as well as teaching A-level art history and A-level art. She also taught art at primary and secondary levels in Ghana. She has had many exhibitions in London and undertakes painting commissions. She takes groups on guided tours round galleries and believes that looking at paintings, sculpture and architecture is vital for a practising artist.

Michael J. Reiss is Professor of Science Education at the UCL Institute of Education, honorary fellow of the British Science Association, visiting professor at the Universities of York and the Royal Veterinary College, docent at the University of Helsinki, a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. After a PhD and post-doctoral work in evolutionary biology, he taught in schools before moving into initial teacher education (initially at secondary level and then at primary). He came to the Institute of Education in 2001, where he undertakes teaching (mostly now at doctoral level), research and writing.

Martin Robinson is an advocate for the great tradition of liberal arts education and author of Trivium 21c, Curriculum: Athena versus the machine and Trivium in Practice. He is a former drama teacher, working for over 20 years in East London state schools. He was a member of senior leadership teams and an advanced skills teacher. Now, he works closely with a variety of schools on curriculum design based on the trivium approach. A regular on the conference circuit both in the United Kingdom and internationally, Robinson’s talks are challenging, entertaining and sure to get people talking and reflecting on their practice. He is also the founder and administrator of the Facebook group ‘Drama teachers and those interested in drama education’, one of the largest groups of its kind, which offers support, challenge and advice to drama educators around the world, and is the director of Trivium 21c Ltd. Education Consultancy.

Gareth Sturdy has been teaching physics since 1994, when he trained in the most deprived areas of Merseyside. His career has taken him to all types of schools including comprehensive, free, faith and independent. He has been Head of Physics in a leading grammar school and led the Mayor of London-backed Physics Factory project, which aims to reinvigorate the subject across London schools. Along the way, he has also found time to be a Fleet Street journalist and run his own public relations business. He continues to write regularly for the press on education and science.

Simon Toyne is Executive Director of Music of the David Ross Education Trust, where he is responsible for the development of music across over 30 state primary and secondary schools in the East Midlands, including leading the award-winning ‘Singing Schools’ programme and conducting the Chapel Choir of Malcolm Arnold Academy and the DRET Youth Choir. His work at DRET has included establishing a common music curriculum, creating a network of partner organizations, developing a team of specialist music coaches and instigating a talent development programme. Toyne is renowned as a choral conductor, working as a director of the Eton Choral Courses and the Rodolfus Foundation Choral Courses, and leading workshops on conducting and singing around the world, having been Director of Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Kingston Parish Church Choir for over 20 years. He is a member of the UK Government’s expert panel for developing a model music curriculum and is the current president of the Music Teachers’ Association.

Foreword

Tim Oates

While discussion of educational purpose is present in the ancient literature of both the East and the West, the universality of education for young people, which is characteristic of modern society, has occurred very recently in human history. We tend to forget just how recent a phenomenon it is. UNESCO figures show that it remains still an aspiration for one in five school-age children. In those nations that, two centuries ago, were at the forefront of universal and extended education, the focus and content of education remain heavily contested. And scores in the big transnational surveys across those nations are a mix of rising, flat and declining. Hard won improvements have gone into reverse in some nations, and equity remains a burning issue in almost all. Those nations that have recently attained near-universal participation now have their young people in schools, but while present on the premises, these pupils are not necessarily enjoying the benefits of either strong educational outcomes or educational improvement. Providing sufficient places and teachers is one thing. Providing a rich, effective curriculum is something more.

The stalling of educational improvement in many nations promotes hand-wringing press comment and tense political argument. The words ‘crisis’, ‘failure’ and ‘shock’ accompany vitriolic exchanges in nations as far apart as Scotland and Australia. In education we seemed to have achieved so much in such a short time – universal literacy in England attained during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution – but then we have failed to consolidate our gains in curriculum content and process into a solid set of principles and understandings.

The simplicity of aims and purposes present in ‘universal participation’ and ‘universal literacy’ has been replaced by complexity: attention to curriculum processes as well as content; attention to pupil welfare as well as cognitive development; integrity of social learning alongside the needs of individuals; equity as well as attainment; attending to the distinctions between intended curriculum, taught curriculum, learned curriculum and assessment curriculum.

Much of this complexity is entirely right and contributes usefully to curriculum theory and practice. Curriculum exists as a complex interaction of the actions of state, school and pupils. It exists in the formal specification of a National Curriculum as well as the exchanges between children and teachers in classrooms. Finding our way through this complexity to both describe what is happening and develop approaches to professional practice that improve equity and attainment is a challenge to theorists and practitioners alike.

Opportunities presented by educationalists seeking to understand and examine this complexity have on occasion been squandered when subsequent misrepresentation of their work has occurred. When in the 1960s and 1970s Lawrence Stenhouse argued cogently for curriculum to be seen as far more than merely a list of content, and the action of teachers being critical for curriculum enactment and improvement, he was not arguing that content specification was unnecessary or seeking to undermine the authority of the discipline knowledge that was codified by specifications. The idea that teachers are active creators of the enacted curriculum in specific school settings does not deny cultural transmission of established knowledge, understanding and skills.

The fractious debates over these matters seem to have wandered down roads that have proved to be spectacular dead ends, some of which, when a lull in the debate has given pause for thought, now seem absurd. The confusions have perhaps been created by a legitimate attempt to understand the complexity of curriculum, but both contemporary philosophy of science and mind do not look kindly on them. The strength of the contributions in this book is that they subject both the assumptions and content of these debates to intense critical scrutiny. But they go beyond scrutiny. They use critique of previous epistemological and ontological positions to formulate propositions for action to reinstate focus on disciplines and the importance of development and renewal of disciplines through education.

The most significant victim in the debates prior to this book was subject disciplines. There have been two severe attacks. The first claims knowledge to be of far lower status than educational process or other outcomes of education. The second claims that subjects are arbitrary.

On knowledge, the claims derive from three strands of argument within post-modernist theory. The first strand is that knowledge is value-laden in its production and represents and recreates specific power relations. While the production and reproduction of knowledge is human endeavour and must by necessity include values, the decision to analyse a virus rather than an insect or a film of course includes a value-based decision. But within educational discourse this position has decayed time and time again into an attack on the power and authority of the knowledge created by this endeavour, arguing that acquisition of discipline knowledge should not be one of the principal aims of education.

This fails to recognize that both philosophy of science and those within subject disciplines have moved well beyond the relativism and solipsism – even nihilism – that this position represents. Subject disciplines have stubbornly ignored the brake on the appreciation of the value of knowledge posed by some educational theorists and have continued to create new knowledge of human disease, animal behaviour, information storage, optical and radio telescopy, minimalist music and ceramics. Alongside this refusal of subject discipline communities to stop working and acting, contemporary philosophy of science both explains why certain claims about the social and natural world have more explanatory, causal and predictive power than others and, rather than using the fact that knowledge evolves over time as proof of its arbitrariness, goes well beyond this stalling point to explain why knowledge changes over time. This reasserts the power of human knowledge, the importance of discipline enquiry (its techniques, language and practices) and the need to be discriminating – not all knowledge is equal. Some needs to be lodged as ‘interesting but outmoded’, some to be rejected as ‘false and misleading’ and, of course, some accepted as a canon of ‘old but essential’ – whether that be in geography, cosmology or literature. Of course, the debased philosophical position that emerges from post-modernist thought has more recently been joined by a new set of voices. While not sharing the philosophical tenets of post-modernist thinkers, these voices claim that the sheer bulk of human knowledge means that the acquisition of specific knowledge is inhibiting and unnecessary and that the skills of finding knowledge are more important than the content of knowledge itself.

Just as the bandwagon of ‘all knowledge is arbitrary’ was beginning to run out of energy, these interests gathered behind it and gave it a new push. The arguments against this new erosion of the authority of knowledge derive not only from epistemology but have been made by some in relation to cognitive science: what individuals recall and have immediately available for thought and action is critical to their constitution of identity. Their argument is that without retention of key concepts and core knowledge in long-term memory, the limits of working memory mean that high-order critical thinking cannot occur. But despite the compelling nature of the theoretically driven and empirically driven refutation of this ‘all you need is the knowledge of how to access knowledge’ proposition, further confusion was caused regarding the authority of knowledge. Put simply, the older and newer arguments confuse different forms of authority:

Authority – power associated with the production of knowledge

Authority – of the school in ‘legally holding children’

Authority – of the teacher

Authority – of the state in determining the curriculum

Authority – of instruments of curriculum control

Authority – of knowledge

This book untangles these confusions. And rightly so. The rhetoric of access to powerful knowledge was very much located in the Left during the 1930s and 1940s. The social liberation and equity that artists, political activists and politicians sought was not associated with dismissing the powerful knowledge that had been derived by elites, but by obtaining access to it for all. Now, the same commitment to access to powerful knowledge through schooling is more associated with the Right. What this book provides is a valuable focus on the authority of discipline knowledge, and it confronts the difficulty that knowledge stands as bodies of ‘discipline knowledge’ independent of the actions of individuals yet needs to be acquired meticulously by new generations of individuals, and is contributed to by individual and social efforts.

The second victim of the reductivism of post-modernist analysis of social and historical location of knowledge and its notional ‘arbitrariness’ was the existence of subjects and disciplines. The discrimination between disciplines was seen as historically mutable, the boundaries as vague (citing maths in physics, biochemistry, and the historical changes from ‘natural philosophy’ to three major sciences) and the sense of the school curriculum as a product of state control. Subject disciplines were out, cross-curriculum specification and rich, multi-disciplinary ‘learning experiences’ were in. But in this position we again can identify confusions. The fact that insights can be gained from the application of physics in medicine, the application of psychology in economics, or that digital rendering can give a visual representation of the equations of black holes does not detract from the important particularity of the concepts, techniques and practices that differentiate specific disciplines.

The fractious debates about ‘subjects’ become most intense around ‘student motivation’ and ‘the purpose of education’. Statements such as ‘we should be teaching pupils to be prepared for the real world as it exists today…’ and ‘…motivating real contexts as a basis for learning…’ de-prioritize something very important: that ‘disciplines’ have provided concepts and techniques that reveal deep structures that are not particularly evident or obvious in real experience. Knowledge of the existence of the electron was neither obvious nor readily gained from ‘day to day real life experience’, nor the difference between bacteria and viruses nor the idea of ‘unconscious bias’. While it is clear that careful variation of context is essential for establishing and maintaining learner engagement, it is only a part of the complex jigsaw of curriculum theory and practice. To reify ‘contexts’ over the specifics of disciplines is to walk a very narrow path indeed, and runs an extreme risk of neglecting the human agency that comes from disciplinary understanding: tightly linked networks of explanatory concepts and defined practices (of production, analysis, discourse, enquiry).

This book provides a tonic to reductivist analysis and oppositional debate. It preserves the complexity of what we mean by ‘curriculum’ yet remains clear about the aims of education in creating both attainment and equity. It is traditional, in that it asserts the importance of antecedent discipline thought and enquiry, yet modern, in that it acknowledges the importance of the conditions for creating new knowledge and the criteria we should use for subjecting that knowledge to scrutiny. Opinion-formers, educationalists, politicians, teachers and their managers, pupils and parents all need reference points and principles, for these are a guide to thought and action. This is exactly what this book provides.

Cambridge, May 2020

Introduction to the second edition

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish

At the very heart of education sits the vast accumulated wealth of human knowledge and what we choose to impart to the next generation: the curriculum.

(Spielman, 2017)

We produced the first edition of this book in 2017 because we were concerned about the paucity of attention to curriculum thinking in general and a lack of clarity about what a subject is. We highlighted how an over-regulated system was placing too much emphasis on testing and data management and not enough on the intrinsic value of learning knowledge (Biesta, 2010). As we noted at the time, this development was related to confusion about the purpose of the curriculum and the nature and value of disciplinary knowledge. In the UK, as in other English-speaking countries, ‘knowledge was dethroned in society and displaced in curriculum’ (Wheelahan, 2010: 87).

In the introduction to the first edition we suggested that:

Many young people entering the teaching profession are unclear about the role of disciplines and knowledge in the school curriculum and the education of children, and some do not understand how academic knowledge is different from other types of knowledge, or what distinguishes knowledge from opinion. For those already working in the profession, including experienced teachers and representatives of examination boards, subjects have come to be viewed less in terms of epistemic principles and value, and more as a means to another end such as developing marketable skills, facilitating well-being, promoting diversity or addressing global issues. (Standish and Sehgal Cuthbert, 2017: xvii)

This was in spite of the 2013 reform of the National Curriculum for England and Wales, which aimed to re-focus the curriculum on subject knowledge (DfE, 2010). While the new curriculum does include significant and valuable academic knowledge it was widely criticized by schools and educationalists, if not dismissed, as only reflecting the perspective of the UK Coalition government (Conservative Party and Liberal Democrat Party) who led the reform. In essence, the government had not won schools over to their curriculum. And, with the Department for Education announcing that the new curriculum does not apply to free schools and academies, it is no longer a national curriculum. What we felt was missing from the reform was a clear rationale for why this knowledge is important for children to learn in the twenty-first century and what different forms knowledge takes.

However, the fault for the paucity of curriculum thinking, and confusion between pedagogy and curriculum, in teacher education lies not just with schools but also with the field of curriculum theory. Zongyi Deng (2018a) discusses the uncoupling of curriculum theory from the social realities of schools as complex social institutions, and from realist epistemologies, contributing to what he calls the re-conceptualization of curriculum theory. He observes that since the ‘post-modern/post-structural turn’, questions about which knowledge schools should teach and how it is implemented in schools have been superseded by questions about ‘whose knowledge’ and what ‘agenda’ or ‘power’ they have in society, making curriculum studies