Our curriculum of hope: A culture of creativity

This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Tina Farr, Headteacher, St Ebbe’s Primary School, UK

Introduction

This case study examines how our approach to reworking our primary school curriculum has unleashed creativity in our staff and learners, has allowed us to overcome the fear that is so prevalent in our education system, and has led to the human flourishing which should be at the heart of every school community.

We are a 258-pupil primary school in Oxford with above average numbers of pupils with English as an additional language (EAL), pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and slightly below average numbers of economically disadvantaged pupils. Our vision statement is: ‘Wise, compassionate citizens with the power to make a difference.’ Our values are curiosity, courage and connection. Our business is human flourishing.

In January 2019, commissioned by staff and governors, we set out on a mission to overhaul the curriculum at our school to align it more closely with our vision for education. Having worked with Dr. Debra Kidd in the past, we knew that she was the right person to help us in beginning our journey.

Our curriculum structure

Our curriculum is split into 21 projects, structured around people in places, with problems, and the possibilities to solve them.
We begin each project by setting the scene with compelling human stories of diverse, transformative individuals. This approach means that children care about what they’re learning, and the knowledge then has something to stick to. As Daniel Willingham (2009) says: ‘Stories are privileged in the human mind’.

Each story has an enquiry question associated with it; one that deliberately has no right or wrong answer. ‘Do humans need art and why?’ is one example.

Philosophical discussions are threaded throughout the project. We ask: Have our views changed in relation to the enquiry question? Have I changed? Can I convince others to change? Our children and staff know that what they’re learning is important – that it has the power to change the way people think and what they believe.

The enquiry questions are umbrellas above the specific subjects of the national curriculum, with progression in knowledge (and skills) clearly laid out. The opportunities for literacy are endless. Science and mathematics sometimes fit but, where they don’t, they are taught discretely so as not to dilute them.

All of this culminates in a learning exhibition at the end of each project, based on Ron Berger’s ‘hierarchy of audience’, which demonstrates how motivation increases when children are presenting authentic learning which is ‘of service to the world’, rather than simply doing it to please their teacher (Berger R, 2003).

Unleashing creativity through the planning process

We planned our first set of projects alongside Dr. Debra Kidd, who, over a period of four days, established herself as a ‘Pedagogue in Residence’. She asked our teachers a crucial question: ‘What do you want for your children by the end of the year?’ Compassion, equality and justice, creativity, awe and wonder, resilience, belonging and sustainability were all high on the agenda. This feedback taught us what motivates our teachers, as well as what they want for the children in their classes. What they didn’t say was ‘high test results’. We acknowledge that competency in core subjects is hugely important, but that this is not the sole purpose of education.

We put aside our prior beliefs about planning: starting with objectives and filling in boxes on planning sheets. The room came alive – it was electric – the driving emotion was joy. We experienced what human flourishing could feel like.

The planning process was where the magic of creativity began for us. When we are learning something, it is the process that brings us joy and surprise, where we are most likely to enter the flow state, described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2008) as ‘a cognitive state where one is completely immersed in an activity’.

Planning alive

Our Deputy Headteacher and I are present in every planning session to create psychologically safe spaces. We help our teachers to be courageous in their choices by keeping focused on the process. We create shared accountability, which makes us all more courageous: if something doesn’t work, we’re all accountable.

We feed all ideas into a simple structure which sustains the underlying principles of the curriculum and prevents it from turning into a topic web with tenuous links. Only then do we develop the enquiry questions.

From here, we plan stage-by-stage at the medium-term planning level, removing the artificial constraints of a five-day week. We weave each subject in. We then find our person in a place, with a problem, and ask – what are the possibilities? Where’s the hope?

Putting our new curriculum into practice

We launched our first projects into practice in the summer term of 2019, including planned opportunities for reflection and discussion with teachers as a way of evaluating its success. We sent short feedback surveys to parents and the positive effects on engagement and attitude to learning were seen and felt:

“My daughter spent the first three years of her school life feeling stupid (her word). With the new curriculum, she comes home quoting facts and information, wanting to discuss topics in a way she has never done before. She’s far more engaged and has completely thrown us with her depth of knowledge and understanding of topics/issues. The curriculum has allowed her to progress and grow in a way she couldn’t before. It restricted her. She’s not afraid and will try everything that is given to her.” (Parent, July 2019)

“I feel like I’m doing a completely different job.” (Teacher, June 2019)

Facing the challenges

No learning process is complete without its challenges. When we throw ourselves into something new, we must expect that the process won’t be smooth.

Buoyed up by the success of the first set of projects, we embarked on writing the second. This time, however, the Deputy Head and I found ourselves in the learning pit, concerned that we couldn’t be as ‘free’ as we were with the first. The feedback and energy in our school was too good to ignore but we had to be pragmatic. Was the knowledge coherent? How were we demonstrating progression across the school? What were the core concepts that would hold it all together?

Finding solutions

We realised we needed more of a paper trail to map it and join it all up. We made knowledge organisers, knowledge progression grids, a sequencing document and we tightened up our medium-term plans.

We adjusted our plans according to our vision and values, threading in the concepts articulated by our teachers at the start of the process. We also made time at the beginning and end of the projects for discussing the enquiry questions with the children, as well as for the curation of the learning exhibition, assessment, and reflection at the end.

It was all there. We realised that we had covered the national curriculum programmes of study and more.

The result

We have a beautiful curriculum. It unfolded as it was meant to because we were courageous: we walked into the unknown, and we learned as we went along. It lives and breathes as teachers, with their creativity at the core, feel the autonomy and trust necessary to respond to our context and the young people in front of them.

“I am delighted by my own curiosity, constantly reading about the topic and sharing with the children (unconsciously showing myself as a happy learner and inviting them to be the same).” (Year 4 Teacher)

Our 21 projects are outlined on our website in the hope that they provide some inspiration for others. We have a teaching team who want to stay, who are thriving in their roles and joyful in their demeanour. We have 100 per cent parent/carer turnout at learning exhibitions, and we are bombarded with positive feedback from children, parents and staff.

As school leaders we should question the pedagogies and curriculum content that we choose, rather than simply doing what has always been done. We can try new things, make small adjustments and learn what works by observing the children’s and teachers’ responses. The national curriculum gives us the jurisdiction to do this as stated in the following sections:

• (3.2) ‘The national curriculum is just one element in the education of every child. There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications.’ (DfEDepartment for Education - a ministerial department responsible for children’s services and education in England, 2014, p. 6)
• (3.4) ‘Schools are free to choose how they structure their school day, as long as the content of the national curriculum programmes of study is taught to all pupils.’ (DfE, 2014, p. 6)

The purpose of education should be to create the conditions for learning in our schools wherein each individual may flourish. The creation of our curriculum has been crucial in fostering such a culture at St. Ebbe’s.

For further reading, see: Kidd D (2020) A Curriculum of Hope. Carmarthen: Crown House Publishing.