Content overload?
Well hello there, and welcome to update #104!
When we develop our planning units from the national curriculum programmes of study, there can be a tendency to head straight to the subject content. However, it’s important to pause and consider the bigger picture from the purpose statements for each of the subjects.
If we go straight to the content to be taught, it can end up with our pupils receiving a diet which is a bit ‘bitty’! As Stephen Pinker says:
‘Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory.
Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.’
When we make the purpose statements the plank on which we create an enticing curriculum for our pupils, we are more likely to provide the links that help them to see the value of the subjects we teach.
As far as the programmes of study are concerned, there can be a tendency to think that there is masses of content to be taught. While that might be true for some subjects, I don’t believe it’s the case for the foundation subjects, apart from history.
We need to remind ourselves that the content in the programmes of study are to be taught across the Key Stages, and for Key Stage 2 that’s four years and Key Stage 3 it’s three years!
We also need to remind ourselves that we can’t teach everything we would like to. We want to give our pupils as much information and interesting knowledge as possible. And that’s because we want to do the best by them. But the danger is that we end up with a curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep.
How has this come about?
‘Content overload’ is one of the issues that’s been identified by the Curriculum and Assessment review. Professor Becky Francis says concerns about volume of content in classrooms have come up in conversations with teachers, pupils and parents:
She said that when looking at the national curriculum, some specifications did not seem overloaded. Others, by contrast, were “under-prescribed”, leading to content overload in the classroom as teachers try to fill in the gaps, she suggested
Under-prescribed areas seemed “to be leading to a burgeoning of content, as schools, trusts and teachers try to imagine, perhaps, what Ofsted would like to see or what their trust is looking for, or even just an accumulation of practice and topics on the ground over time”.
We need to remember that there are scholars who spend a lifetime studying and exploring one aspect of one part of one subject! So we mustn’t beat ourselves up if we miss something out.
Dylan Wiliam has a helpful way of framing this by asking ‘What do our pupils need to know?’ and ‘What is neat to know?’ When we are considering what they need to know, we are making judgments about what they need in order to make sense of future content or which will be helpful for them in their future lives. If it’s neat to know, then it’s not essential and we can include if we find we have time, or maybe set it for a homework exercise.
Fewer things, greater depth…
Until next time
Mary
Think the issue of content overload might be because of a mix of subject knowledge confidence as well as professional expertise and judgement on how much time to spend on particular topics. At the time of writing, 20 teaching weeks until GCSE Computer Science papers, I've forensically mapped what my students need to focus on for the Exams and considered how much time 'we' have to teach and learn. I apply similar techniques to my Primary classes guided by structures of programmes of learning produced by organisations such as the DfE funded National Centre for Computing Education.
I always plan longer units of work by starting at the end. What is the outcome the children are aiming for, and how does it play a part in their overall education? From there, each lesson in the sequence adds a brick to the wall.
I love how Wiliam puts it. His work played such a huge part in my Masters dissertation - I find his approach to assessment so effective and what you’ve referenced is exactly why.