Building the Evidence Base for a Curriculum for the 21 st Century

1. Building the Evidence Base for a Curriculum for the 21st Century Evidence from a 3-year research project monitoring the curriculum carried out for QCDA

3. Our synthesis • Based on analysis of the technical reports from 7 probes, 3 learner and one ( multi level) staff survey, 24 focus groups (13 Secondary, 7 Primary, 4 Staff) and 3 systematic reviews carried out over 3 years – 2007 - 2008 • Questions for each linked research project flowed from: • priorities arising from QCDA remit • data from other research strands or previous years – e.g. findings re: challenge • consultation with Curriculum Evidence Advisory Panel (CEAP)

4. Structure for the synthesis • The initial systematic review of research reviews identified 6 key themes as being linked with positive outcomes for learners. These emphasised: • Context based learning • Connecting the curriculum with learners’ experiences of home and community • Curriculum content and experiences that identify and build on learners’ starting points • Flexibility that enables deeper conceptual development • Ensuring the excellent professional development and subject knowledge on which such approaches depend

5. Structure for the synthesis • We took these as the starting point for the synthesis but, in the light of the scale and shape of our collected evidence we also: • amalgamated context based learning and linking the curriculum in school with learning in the home; and • added ‘Constructing challenge in the curriculum’; and ‘Engaging learners in assessment’. • Data for each theme were extracted from reports in outline, tested through a collaborative, parallel analysis process and summarised in our final report

6. Examples of key issues explored via this synthesis process • The evidence for the benefits of ensuring effective access to the curriculum via carefully structured group work including its effects on: • Motivating learners to engage with many subjects in depth • Enhancing attainment and achievement • Enhancing reasoning and problem solving skills and emotional development • Improving confidence • Supporting increasingly independent learning • increasing leadership skills

7. Examples of key issues explored via this synthesis process • Constructing appropriately challenging curriculum experiences is in itself challenging • Teachers are acutely aware of what can go wrong with over challenge and feel driven to be supportive • Strategies that helped overcome this included: • collaborative enquiry and problem solving; • encouraging learners to take more responsibility for their own learning; and • involving them in providing teachers with the information they need to ‘let go’ of control.

8. Examples of key issues explored via this synthesis process • The importance of context based learning in engaging learners with the curriculum and seeing its relevance to their lives beyond school. In doing this effective schools: • Create conditions in school for drawing on outside experiences • Engage parents in learning set by the school • Draw actively in and on community based activities • Engaging learners actively in assessment and diagnosis is important • Specifically it helps teachers overcome concerns about the time it takes to diagnose starting points for each learner individually and thus helps them build on what pupils know and can do and avoid teaching to the test

9. Examples of key issues explored via this synthesis process • Structured CPD is an essential component of effective Curriculum Development (CD) and CD is a strong driver for CPD. When the two are closely aligned: • school leaders see CD as part of school improvement; • teachers see CD as part of the day job; and • developing curriculum experiences, schemes of work and lessons stop feeling like bureaucracy and become an evidence based motor for professional practice – the means by why teachers collectively realise their aspirations for young people. • Progression within years is well attended to but progression between years and phases, even in schools that are effective curriculum innovators, is challenging at scale