Thread by @SaysMiss

🧵 I’ve been thinking about collaborative curriculum development and why it’s so important..

💭 the *perfect* English curriculum doesn’t exist, because it needs to attend to context- context of who it will serve, but also who enacts it.

💭 this is why diversity of thought, underpinned by solid frameworks for difficult conversations make for *amazing* subject level debate in departments.

💭 It also means that the *what* is synonymous to the *how* of curriculum. Understanding curriculum as several micro- level implementation processes is a helpful way to begin to consider navigating the process of change.

💭 in short, it is likely to be ineffective to design and attempt to implement a curriculum without doing a few things first as a team.

💭 have some really meaty conversations about what is already working and why. Not because the kids like it, not because we like it, not because it’s fun, but because it aids knowledge building over time and gets us really excited as subject experts to get stuck into teaching it.

💭 then, have some even meatier conversations about the absence. What’s missing? Does it matter? Why? Interrogate this reality and challenge the thinking of others. How Do You Know You Need To Fix This? Take as long as you need- it’s important. It save us all from wasting..

Precious time creating classroom materials to teach something that:
▪️We don’t need
▪️Doesn’t attend to the problem
▪️Doesn’t attend to the right problem
▪️Attends to a cohort specific problem (and they’ve left now) etc etc etc.

💭 You’ve probably collectively descended into an utter whinge fest about your poor existing curriculum, despairing that EVERYTHING is broken. It’s not. Some kids liked it and went onto study Eng. Some kids passed some exams so they could study other subjects they liked more.

💭 Together, identify the highest leverage point for your context- what one problem are you trying to attend to? This may be the persuasive writing unit from 2003 still going strong, or the novel that used to be fit for purpose. It could be more conceptual or thematic. It may..

Be that there needs to be room for independent practice or time for teachers to provide high quality feedback because there’s ZERO TIME. It might be that teaching LOTF and Holes in the same year of study feels a bit disparate in terms of academic challenge. BUT..

What is the problem. What is it. One. Problem (for now).

💭 All this collaborative thinking and debate is tricky and edgy and diverse but a few things happen that make it so useful in the early stages of curriculum review.

💭 By having these discussions, we are inadvertently:
▪️ speaking about the curriculum as this complex thing that needs our collective attention;
▪️ normalising disagreement and getting comfortable with it;
▪️ interrogating our own initial responses and looking for the evidence.

▪️working out a framework as a team for establishing ways of working, shared language and not bypassing theories of action because, DIALOGIC

💭 Then we can start to think about curricular change as a theory of change and start having even more meaty conversations around establishing the active ingredients and shared language for our change.

💭 THEN, we can consider how this might look like as a manageable, sustainable piece of work and think quite carefully about how we might evaluate it as an ongoing piece of work at the point of design, but also (if a component of curriculum) once taught the first time over.

💭 There’s lots we might discuss around establishing the enactment that will save us time later on, such as universally agreeing prior knowledge we can reference, complexities and anticipated misconceptions, student entry knowledge and aims for endpoint knowledge.

💭 We might have discussions around: our knowledge and expertise to design and deliver; the PD we might need to prepare us; who might be best placed in the team to deliver that PD and who might work on what in terms of design.

💭 once again, there is *no* perfect English curriculum because any curriculum is only as successful as those driving it. To quote Wiliam, ‘the real curriculum is created by teachers, every day’ so the ‘how’ is SO important to keeping us all excited about this work. 🧵