Who should define the curriculum? #EEES613

It's not an easy prospect to decide who should define the curriculum. Over 150 of my third year education students are grappling with this conundrum as I write. They have to write a 5000 word essay (their final one before they leave the university to take up their first jobs in primary teaching), and they have to try to come up with an answer. It's a tough assignment.

Clearly, there are numerous perspectives on this question. Firstly, my students will need to define what they mean by 'curriculum'. Is it the National Curriculum - the framework created by the policy units and government departments that outlines what should be taught in English primary schools? Or do they mean each individual school leadership's interpretation of that framework? Or do they mean something else? Ultimately, the question is not so much about the curriculum or who should define it. Instead, the assignment focuses on the visions and values of each student, and their future aspirations as educators.

They will need to offer their own individual perspectives, and give a critical and reflective account of how their own personal and professional identity has been shaped over the past three years. They will need to draw on their own experiences, both as teachers and as school students, alongside all they have learnt from theory and research, to answer this question. In essence, each student needs to engage with philosophy, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, ethics and global perspectives alongside their notions of pedagogy. They need to deliver a reasoned, critical and reflective response to the question.

It gets me wondering - how many qualified teachers could answer this question in such a manner? I think all of us would find it difficult to articulate our ideas, visions and values in 5000 words. Each of us would arrive at perspectives that were uniquely our own, formed and crystallised through years of practice at the 'chalk face', dealing with assessment, planning, behaviour management, school cultures, funding issues, workloads ... and constant fatigue.

But ultimately, any teacher who loves their job will tell you - it's the teacher in the classroom who ultimately decides what is being taught, and how it is taught. Regardless of the external pressures placed upon classroom teachers by governments, leadership teams and parents, good teachers know instinctively what to teach, and when and how to teach it. I am sure that as they leave the university in a few weeks, all of my students will look back on this final, tough, mind melting assignment, and realise that it is a chronicle of their journey so far - as they seek to become the teachers they really want to be.

You can follow (and contribute) the online discussion for this module on the Twitter hashtag #EEES613

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Who should define the curriculum? #EEES613 by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.