Collaborative curriculum design in the foundation subjects: Improving subject knowledge and confidence to teach music through an initial teacher education ITaP
Written by: Nicola Hutton
6 min read
NICOLA HUTTON, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, LIVERPOOL HOPE UNIVERSITY, UK
The aim of this project was to address barriers that students in ITE (initial teacher education) have in planning and delivering a broad and balanced curriculum through identified foundation subjects. Firstly, it is well documented that foundation subjects are afforded less teaching time in ITE, although this does vary from institution to institution (Ofsted, 2020). Equally a number of schools choose to employ third party providers for subjects such as music, PE and MFL (modern foreign languages), so the opportunities to practise these subjects is greatly diminished. This impacts subject expertise among generalist mentors, whose own knowledge is subsequently underdeveloped (Caldwell et al., 2021). Additionally, while the CooperGibson research into curriculum support resources (DfE, 2018) indicates that commercial schemes of work were used less in primary schools than in secondary, our own data within the Liverpool Hope
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