This article is based on an original research article published in the International Journal of Early Years Education (Boyd, 2014a). The full article can be found here. This paper presents findings from a project completed within a collaborative practitioner research partnership between a nursery school and a primary school, and a university-based educational researcher. The […]
Since the introduction of the new National Curriculum in 2014, our school’s aim has been to design a curriculum that meets the needs of the students at our school, is broad and balanced, and is engaging for all. In order to do this we have carried out research by attending courses and reading widely around […]
Cognitive load theory has led to the development of many instructional techniques for enhancing learning that are designed to prevent learners from overloading their working memory by eliminating wasteful cognitive load that is not essential for learning. However, the effectiveness of a particular teaching technique depends on the relationship between the characteristics of learners’ cognitive […]
Public debate across the West is often polarised, angry and hysterical. Social media amplifies extreme and strident views. People tend to think the worst of their opponents and often believe or disbelieve things because it suits their preconceived ideas…’ This is the introduction to the BBC radio series Sweet Reason. Unfortunately, this description is all […]
Autism has traditionally been viewed as a condition predominantly affecting boys, and therefore autistic girls are not being sufficiently identified. Gould and Ashton-Smith (2011) recognise that autistic girls are broadly misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed, and although the male-to-female ratio has narrowed significantly over the years (currently 3:1), a recent meta-analysis of prevalence studies by Loomes et […]
Gloucester Road Primary School in Cheltenham has been on a considerable journey over the last 10 years. In 2008, it was in special measures. A new head and senior leadership team took up their posts four years ago, and in July 2017 the school received its very first Ofsted ‘outstanding’. The reasons for this success are many and varied, and include […]
One of the most frequent comments that students make after I teach them about memory (and about why some strategies are much more powerful than others) is ‘Why didn’t we learn this sooner?’. Teaching students about memory seems like a no-brainer. Students are only human after all. As humans, we are programmed to look for […]
The study of multimodality, as explained by Bezemer (2012), ‘focuses on analysing and describing the full repertoire of meaning-making resources that people use (visual, spoken, gestural, written, three-dimensional, and others, depending on the domain of representation) in different contexts, and on developing means that show how these are organized to make meaning’. When I first […]
Michael Young and colleagues’ principle of ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young et al., 2014) reignited debate about how the school curriculum can be a tool for social justice. Based on my experience as a primary school teacher in a disadvantaged area, I reflect on what powerful knowledge is, why it is an important curriculum principle and how […]
The importance of the curriculum in effective teaching Walter Doyle’s seminal paper ‘Effective teaching’, written over thirty years ago (Doyle, 1985), argues that in order to assess the effectiveness of teaching, we have to take into account the curriculum and pedagogy. At a recent conference, Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s Head of Research, made a similar point and […]
Reflection on one’s own lessons is typically viewed as a key aspect of professional development. Teachers are exhorted to be reflective practitioners, and this – it is assumed – will make them better at their job, a principle often seen as an instrument of system-wide improvement (e.g. Donaldson, 2011). But how accurate are such reflections? Can […]
The Rise – the first school to be opened by Ambitious about Autism Schools Trust, a multi-academy trust for students with an EHCP (education, health and care plan) for autism – is not alone in its quest to improve the coherence of our curriculum. However, as an all-through school, with a slightly shorter school day […]
Conflict of interest statement: This study was carried out by Sumdog, a company providing free and paid versions of their software to schools. The study design and planned analysis were reviewed by an independent academic and registered with the Open Science Framework prior to any data collection. The registration, along with associated documents, can be […]
In most biology departments, a spiral curriculum can be seen in schemes of work (SOW) and in the point order of exam board specifications. For good reason. A subject in which key concepts underpin more complex ideas, such as knowledge of protein structure and function being essential to understanding the selectively permeable nature of cell membranes, requires the teaching sequence to be carefully planned. There should be opportunities to revisit key concepts in different contexts. Typically, biology curricula are […]
We live in exciting times for educational research. Research on learning and cognition is developing rapidly. The findings from this research are increasingly making their way into classroom practice. A range of organisations and people in education (the Chartered College of Teaching very much among them) are working to test how we can use the […]
In recent years, cognitive scientists have provided teachers with insights into ways of helping students to remember learning. Driven by the work of Willingham (2009), Mccrea (2017) and Brown et al. (2014), we have developed our pedagogy and curriculum to teach memorably and make learning stick. At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice. […]
Curriculum is all about power. Decisions about what knowledge to teach are an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power. To say that pupils should learn ‘the best that has been thought and said’ is never adequate. Start the conversation, and questions abound: ‘Whose […]
Purposeful Curricula Purposeful school curricula try to accommodate national experience and culture, philosophical approaches to learning that flow from the school’s identity, local factors (including the geography and history of the community served) and a clear view of what constitutes the common good. Ethically vibrant curricula include a reasoned view of human flourishing and what […]
The reformed music A-level examination requires students to think far more synoptically than the previous A-level curriculum. Students now spend two years learning a vast amount of new content, which is then tested in one two-hour exam at the end of this period. A complete understanding of the musical canon, ranging from the Renaissance period […]
England’s National Curriculum states, in an echo of Matthew Arnold’s words from his book Culture and Anarchy (Arnold, 1869), that teachers should provide ‘pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens. [And] introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said, [engendering] an appreciation of human creativity […]
