Crisis in the Curriculum

E Cuff, George Payne, E C Cuff, George C F Payne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136720161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection of papers surveys key aspects of the curriculum, investigates the present situation and discusses what improvements need to be made. It is contributed by teachers, educational advisers and researchers and ranges across a variety of different institutional teaching settings and a variety of different subject areas. The approach is empirical rather than theoretical and the book is divided into three sections covering content, methods and evaluation.

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

Ted Cuff

George Payne had the idea of producing a collection of papers on Curriculum Issues towards the end of 1982. Quite simply, he argued that teachers, advisers, teacher trainers, educational researchers and others concerned with schools and what goes on in them inevitably have views on what they see as key issues in the school curriculum. A collection of this type would be an encouragement to articulate these views from these various vantage points.

In discussing the idea of a collection of this kind, we produced a few basic ground rules to determine what sort of contributions would be acceptable. We felt that a collection on Curriculum Issues should be fairly eclectic, ranging across a variety of different institutional teaching settings and a variety of different subject areas. Some coherence would naturally be given by the fact that all contributors were to address some aspect of the school curriculum, but more basically, coherence would also derive from each contribution raising issues and pointing up conclusions of a general nature. There would be no. attempt to fit contributions into a general scheme, grand theory or whatever dreamed up by us as editors.

This broad, eclectic policy was maintained in that we were also not prescriptive on the form an issue could take. We suggested it may be an argument for developing a new direction in a subject or area – or even a proposal for a new subject. Or it could question the nature of a subject. Or it might critically examine the teaching, studying or examining of a subject.

What we did urge an our potential authors, however, was our preference for an approach which was ‘empirical’ rather than ‘theoretical’. We risked the crudity of this distinction, in order to encourage contributions which pointed to practical possibilities and practical implications. We felt that the best chance of such an outcome derived from stressing the empirical relevance of contributions so that readers could most easily evaluate the arguments in terms of recognisable and familiar situations. Albeit, we were not concerned whether the materials discussed derived from first hand classroom teaching or the analysis of materials derived from observing and/or recording classroom activities, although we anticipated that the book would include both types of approach. By producing materials which readers could relate to their own experiences in schools and classrooms, we hoped to encourage contributions with some ‘authenticity’.

This notion of authenticity is in effect epitomised in our shift from ‘Curriculum Issues’ to ‘Crisis in the Curriculum’. For in making our final selection, we have ended up not only with contributions which do have the wide and general interest we aimed at, but they also tackle matters of considerable concern to the respective authors. From their standpoint the concern is more than an ‘issue’, it is a ‘crisis’. Consequently, they feel something – and they do suggest what – should be be done now.

Sometimes the crisis is there for all to see. For example, in Chapter Three Jack Hogbin and John Bailey examine the troubles of teaching Religious Education in the secondary school; in Chapter Five, Ted Cuff looks at some aspects of a crisis nationally signalled by the Cockcroft Report, namely, teaching mathematics in both primary and secondary schools; and in Chapter Twelve, Tony Cassidy highlights some of the problems involved in ‘educating the educator’ when he describes his own experiences of developing staff self-evaluation from within the school.

Sometimes the crisis becomes only too apparent once it has been pointed out. For example, Nigel Hall's plea for a rethinking of the teaching of literacy skills to young children, and Digby Anderson's critical appraisal of the rhetoric which pads out the often vacuous promise of many new curriculum packages, may be suitable examples. Carol Cumming's description of her experience of curriculum decision making in the infant school might also be included here.

Prima facie, the other chapters may not be so readily and easily identified as ‘crisis’ by somereaders, though obviously the fact of their inclusion here means that they have at least convinced us as editors. Thus George Payne and Elaine Ridge plead for teachers to enter the child's world, to appreciate their language competence and to modify their teaching methods accordingly; David Hustler and Ian Ashman sound a strong warning note on the way Personal and Social Education seems to be going; John Evans and Brian Davies argue that individuated teaching can be more rigid than some whole class approaches; Harry Osser suggests that in their use of traditional assessment procedures, teachers by and large do not really know what their pupils can do; and John Robinson and John McIntosh argue from the example of ‘A’ level Sociology that the examination system subverts, perhaps perverts, the nature of the subject. All of these authors suggest that if both cognisance and appropriate action is taken of their arguments, significant improvements in classroom learning can result. Viewed thus, and in these terms, these concerns do have the status of a ‘crisis’.

Once the final list of contributions was decided, we could then determine their organisation in book form. We felt that a division into three sections, (a) content, (b) methods, and (c) evaluation and assessment, was a useful way of grouping them. We appreciate, however, that content, methods and assessment are features of each and every contribution. After all, the very existence of the contribution derives from the author(s) making some sort of critical assessment or evaluation of the operation of an aspect of the school curriculum; while the content and teaching methods related to this aspect of the curriculum are simply two sides of the same coin. For example, Chapter Seven on decision making in the Infant classroom has a strong bearing on content as well as raising key issues of teacher self-evaluation, but we decided it had most to say about methods. While Chapter Two on Language Development in the Infant School, or Chapter Four on Personal and Social Education could be viewed as issues of method as much as of content.

Our justifications for grouping contributions into these three sections is mainly in terms of readers’ convenience. In our judgement, we have placed contributions in the most appropriate section, and the existence of these sections has enabled us to produce some introductory summaries before each of them, thereby avoiding overloading this Introduction with detailed material of this kind. Instead at this point it might be more useful to bring out the most important convergent themes running through the various contributions.

Given the general nature of the briefing we gave the contributors, and the range of their backgrounds and approaches, some diversity of approach, style and presentation might be expected. Here it should be noted that we made no attempt to iron out these differences although we did try to minimise the use of technical vocabulary and over-complex syntax to ensure that meanings and intentions were as clear as possible to all interested parties concerned with ‘the curriculum’. Nevertheless, a few important themes run through the contributions and these seem to be more than a mere by-product of the desiderata in our briefing to contributors.

First, most contributors stress the importance of teachers trying to enter and understand what can be roughly summarised as the ‘child's world’. Baldly put, there is not enough awareness of what children can do, of what children know, whether they are in pre-school, primary or secondary settings and schools.

Secondly, contributors recognise that there are no easy solutions to the problems and issues they discuss. They are clear that the realities of everyday life in schools make it extremely difficult for teachers to stand back and scrutinise their own practices in order to develop and adopt different standpoints and approaches. Consequently, contributors try to suggest practical ways forward.

Thirdly, then, insofar as the classic theory/ practice debate emerges, contributors are clear about the need to convince the teacher-as-theorist about what they regard as a crisis in the curriculum. It is the teacher's own theories about what is going on in his classroom that is all-important for shaping up this practice. Generally, they refrain from ironic comparisons from a ‘detached’ position. Instead, there is emphasis on suggesting ways for teachers to develop their own self-evaluation based on the description and analysis of their own actual classroom practices, what they, the teacher (and pupils), actually do.

Finally, another major point emerges from this emphasis on classroom practice. It concerns what contributors take to be ‘data’ when fulfilling our request that their work has ‘empirical reference’. Overwhelmingly, such data consists of reports of observations of classroom practice, often including transcriptions of classroom talk. There is little recourse to any kind of statistical presentation or argument. Instead, ‘rich’ detailed materials are preferred.

In conclusion, this book points to no less than eleven different issues concerning the school curriculum. For the respective contributors, their particular issue is a ‘crisis’, insofar as progress in an important area of the curriculum is checked until something is done. For those in education submerging under on-going quantitative crises concerning staffing, buildings and materials, we may seem to have mis-appropriated the word ‘crisis’. Perhaps so, but we would argue as professionals in the field of education we must also address the sort of qualitative issues concerning the school curriculum that we have presented here in Crisis in the Curriculum.

SECTION A

ISSUES OF CONTENT

This section addresses four substantive areas of the school curriculum: early language development, the teaching of mathematics, religious education, and personal and social education.

In their chapter, George Payne and Elaine Ridge discount deficit models of language development for young children. They argue that instead of faulting children in terms of what they cannot do, it is more useful to see what they can do. Utilising the approach of ‘conversational analysis’, which employs work far less familiar than the well-known Opies and Bernstein, they examine in some detail a transcript of at play two young children. Both are young children, one being 7 years 11 months, the other 4 years and 5 months.

Despite this large age difference, these authors suggest that the two children display a large degree of interactional and conversational competence. For in their shopping game, they show their ability to play and to switch different roles, to move between ‘pretend’ and ‘real’ worlds and to do so in orderly ways. The point is that these orderly ways depend on methodic practices available to any adult conversationalist. For example, in adopting rule-following behaviour, these children are not simply following rules ‘out there’, laid down by some external authority. Rather they are manifestly making rules happen by employing complex interpretive skills. Such skills involve using, where appropriate, such principles as (a) wait-and-see, i.e. keep talking and we will see what meaning will emerge;and (b) the etcetera principle, i.e. one can always say more, so how much is enough for now, for all practical purposes?

Payne and Ridge urge teachers to examine in much more detail the talk of their young pupils as a way of better understanding who they are, what they can do and how they can develop. In short, they are trying to encourage teachers to break the mould of some prevalent though understandable practices in the classroom treatment of young pupils, through the understandings that can arise from trying to enter the world of children.

In their discussion of the teaching of mathematics and maths panic and anxiety broadly in the age range 5-13 years, Cuff similarly urges the importance of teachers using transcriptions of their own lessons to examine what actually happens in the classroom. What do their practices look like to them? What can it be like to be a pupil as a party in or recipient of this style of teaching?

Like language teaching nearly a decade ago, mathematics teaching has been the subject of a major report from a Committee of Inquiry, the Cockcroft Report. This Report emphasises the nature of mathematics, the importance of mathematics and the difficulties of mathematics. Thus the subject is hierarchically organised in conceptual terms, it can significantly affect the world of work and everyday life and it is extremely hard to get hold of. It is much harder than English for example.

But why is it so hard to get hold of? Cockcroft does not strongly address this problem. Perhaps too complacently it talks about the inherent difficulties of Mathematics. Despite being a ‘powerful, concise and unambiguous means of communication’ and having ‘inherently interesting and appealing puzzles’, it is difficult to get hold of because it does not come naturally, it has to be consciously learned, the Report says.

Although of mixed composition, the Commission gives the feeling of mathematicians thinking and writing about mathematics. There is a circularity in this whole approach which gives little promise of real development, of unblocking the ‘mathematical blockage’ which has long been an observable feature of mathematics. Somehow, the problem, what constitutes this ‘blockage’, slips from central focus. The nature and importance of the subject seem to take over as the major concerns of the report. There is discussion of maths panic and anxiety, but it becomes just one of numerous concerns in a large report.

As in the chapter by Payne and Ridge the authors suggest that one problem is that not only are mathematicians talking about mathematics, but also adults are talking about children. Thus they know what the problem is – it is to sharpen up, streamline, improve existing methods. Try harder. Change a little the mix of talk, chalk and mathematical exercises and problem solving.

For example, language is a problem in that words like ‘rate’, ‘tessellations’ have to be translated. Yet synonyms, the equivalents, the paraphrases, could be equally problematic because the translations are from a ‘world of mathematics’, a realm of mathematical reasoning, into an everyday world, where not only do the ‘same’ words (where they exist) mean something else, but they are organised differently into different ways of thinking about things. Moreover, this everyday world is not simply that experienced by adults. For in many ways, children can be seen to have their own culture, i.e. their own ways of organising their knowledge and their world in which adults have to be handled and dealt with.

Alternatively put, it is a passive view to see learning as the maths teacher translating the hard words and by dint of lots of patience and practice ‘getting over’ the subject (albeit with some speed as an organisational constraint experienced is getting through the syllabus, showing progress). This view does not allow for children as they are – active persons with lives of their own who make appraisals and judgements about the activities in which they are obliged to participate (e.g. mathematics).

So how do children experience Maths? What is ‘Maths’ to them? What does ‘Maths’ do (to them) as a label for something? What is the pupils’ world like, what motivates them? What part can Maths play in the organisation of their world?

These questions are empirical. The answers must rely on more than attitude questionnaires and the reconstructions and retrospection of teachers, ex-teachers, and ex-pupils recalling classroom...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• 1. Introduction
• Section A - Issue of Content
• Section B - Issue and Methods
• Section C - Issues in Evaluation and Assessment
• Index
• Notes on Contributors