A presentation for staff at The Coopers' Company and Coborn School on the 'Knowledge Turn' in the National Curriculum

1. The „Knowledge Turn‟ in the
National Curriculum.
Paul Cornish February 2012

2. Skills or Knowledge?

3. Mick Waters, QCA (2010)
“A school shouldn't start with
curriculum content. It should start
with designing a learning
experience and then check it has
met national curriculum
requirements.” (Guardian)

4. Learning for what Purpose?
Learning can be trivial, dangerous or
wrong. It is essentially a technical
process – it emphasises skills that
can be honed and practised, and
accelerated, as if this were an end in
itself.
Lambert (2010)

5. Destined to Fail
• Equity: “Outside looking in”
(Wheelahan)
• Loss of traditional academic
subjects- skills for a knowledge
economy promoted
• Playing exam system
• Pupils „learning‟ without teaching

6. Return to Base Camp and try
again?
The current turn toward
knowledge follows three decades
of the marginalisation or turning
away from knowledge in UK
education. (Mitchell, 2011)

7. External Factors
• Move to 2 year KS3. (Weeden& Lambert)
• Focus on the „Pedagogic adventure‟
without knowing destination (Lambert)
• Emphasize values over knowledge (Civitas)
• Promote personal responsibility (Civitas)
•Knowledge not high on Ofsted agenda
• Exam league tables- playing the system.
• Learning Pathways (Weeden)
• Spatial distribution of outstanding teachers
• Poor knowledge from Primary Schools

8. Internal Factors
• Lack of subject specialists at KS3
• Poorly written curricula – lack of understanding
of curriculum making
• Move away from textbooks
• Focus on teaching exam technique over
acquisition of knowledge
• Lack of understanding as to what is essential
core knowledgein subject area
• Move to sexy topics (amazing places,geography
of extreme sport) without a knowledge base

9. Return to Base Camp and try
again?
The National Curriculum should set out clearly
the core knowledge and understanding that all
children should be expected to acquire in the
course of their schooling. It must embody their
cultural and scientific inheritance, the best that
the past and present generations have to pass on
to the next.
DfE The Importance of Teaching (2010)

10. Who‟s in the Team?
Gove- Importance of Teaching (DfE 2010)
Prince‟s Teaching Institute
Hirsch- Core Knowledge
Michael Young- Bringing Knowledge Back In
Ofsted

11. Three Futures
Future 1: Govian Elitism
Future 2: A Knowledge Society
Future 3: Objective Knowledge

12. Govian Elitism

13. A „Knowledge‟ Society

14. Objective Knowledge

15. Mere Facts?
• Number of people to attempt to climb Mt. Everest: approximately
4,000.
• Number of people to successfully climb Mt. Everest: 660.
• Number of people who have died trying to climb Mt. Everest: 142.
• Height: 29,028 feet, or 5 and a half miles above sea level. This is
equivalent to the size of almost 20 Empire State Buildings.
• Location: part of the Himalaya mountain range; straddles border
of Nepal and Tibet.
• Named for: Sir George Everest, a British surveyor-general of
India.
• Age: approximately 60 million years old.
• Other names: called "Chomolungma" by Tibetans and Sherpas,
which means "Mother Goddess of the Earth."

16. Mere Facts?
The accumulation of fragmentary facts as an end to
itself is like learning a language by simply learning
lists of vocabulary: you may know lots of words but
you still cannot speak the language. For that you
need grammar. By the same token, you cannot
speak a language by only knowing some of the
grammar! You need some vocabulary.
Lambert (2011)

17. Michael Young
I will argue… for a knowledge- based theory
of the curriculum that recognises the
distinction between the type of knowledge
that can be acquired at school, college or
university and the common sense or the
practical knowledge that we aquire in our
every day lives.

18. Hirsch: Knowledge Deficit
Mutualistic relationship between
literacy and knowledge

19. Subject Knowledge
Procedural • Kn1
Content • Kn2
Core • Kn3

20. Kn1 Core Knowledge
The basic elements that students
must know to be acquainted with a
discipline or solve problems in it.
a. Knowledge of terminology
b. Knowledge of specific details and
elements

21. Kn2 Content Knowledge
The interrelationships among the basic
elements within a larger structure that
enable them to function together.
a. Knowledge of classifications and
categories
b. Knowledge of principles and
generalizations
c. Knowledge of theories, models, and
structures

22. Kn3 Procedural Knowledge
How to do something; methods of inquiry, and criteria
for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods.
a. Knowledge of subject-specific skills and al-
gorithms
b. Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and
methods
c. Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use
appropriate procedures

23. Implications: Ofsted
…how well teachers use their
expertise, including their
subject knowledge, to develop
pupils‟ knowledge…
(Ofsted 2012)

24. Implications: Literacy
• Reading aloud in class
• Reading subject specific
material (reading lists for
KS3/4/5)
• Comprehension tasks

25. Implications: Assessment
• In every major KS3 assessment
include aspects Kn1, 2 and 3
• New KS3 assessment (to
replace levels) will be designed
around knowledge
• Kn1, 2 and 3 targets in books

26. Implications: Curriculum Making

27. Knowledge Focused Curriculum Making
How does this take the Learning Activity- to
Student Experiences assist in the
learner beyond what they
already know? Not just acquisition of
every day knowledge from knowledge. How does
the world outside the this use procedural
classroom (Young) knowledge?
Teacher Choices Subject Specialism
Underpinned by Subject- Specific
Key NC Subject Knowledge: Core- The
Concepts linked to Vocabulary. Content- The
Content knowledge Grammar. Procedural-
Investigation/ enquiry

28. Implications: Curriculum Making

29. Implications: CPD
Internal:
Pedagogy, Skills, Data, L&M
External:
Subject Associations, PTI
Events, Universities, Subject Specific
Master‟s Courses

30. Powerful Knowledge
“Only when the knowledge you possess
transforms the mediocre into the excellent
can what you know truly become both
powerful and insightful”
(Charles Swindoll)
“Not knowledge of the powerful” (Young)

31. The „Knowledge Turn‟ in the
National Curriculum.
Paul Cornish February 2012