Unit 8: Involving the whole community in curriculum design and implementation

1. The Year of the Curriculum The programme consists of four modules, each with two units: Unit 8:Involving the whole community in curriculum design and implementation Module 4

2. Welcome to Unit 8 • Involving the whole community in curriculum design and implementation • In this final unit we focus upon making sure the curriculum is outward-looking and that learning is optimised through active engagement with the community. • It is obviously important to exploit opportunities and resources in the local community to make the curriculum relevant to learners’ lives. However it should also be borne in mind that, in the global era, community boundaries are no longer so clear and engagement with widely dispersed international communities is a daily experience for many. It would not be in learners best interests to limit their horizons and hence, in this unit, the community is interpreted in the broad sense. • As this is the final unit, it concludes with a look back at the learning across the whole programme and offers participants an opportunity to take part in self-review to evaluate their progress and to self-certify.

3. Unit 8 Contents • Rationale: Why engage with the community in relation to the curriculum? • The Principles • Whose curriculum is it? • Who are the key stakeholders? • What level of engagement? • Practical stakeholder and community engagement • Developing a common understanding • Engagement relating to overall curriculum principles • Engagement with specific stakeholder groups • Self-review and certification: Your progress as a curriculum developer

4. 1. Rationale An accessible, relevant and evolving curriculum

5. Introduction The focus of the first six units of the Year of the Curriculum programme was curriculum design and units 7 and 8 are concerned with ensuring the intended learning set out in the curriculum is converted into actual learning. Do you remember UNESCO’s three inter-related dimensions? Community and stakeholder engagement is key factor in ensuring the relevance of the curriculum, emphasising its importance and securing the commitment and motivation of learners. Hence the subject of this final unit is the contribution community engagement can make to ensuring the effectiveness of the curriculum. The suspects for this unit are shown below. Two of them you have encountered before and one is fictitious!

6. “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” So said Thomas Gradgrind in the opening lines of Dickens’ Hard Times. He was clearly not a strong believer in a competency curriculum! Fortunately, your new curriculum is probably not being implemented against the backdrop of a Gradgrindian philosophy. This unit has a focus on bringing the power of the community to bear on the curriculum and the drive to establish positive attitudes towards learning.

7. Can schools go it alone? Ofsted’s ‘outstanding’ descriptor for the curriculum: ‘The school’s curriculum promotes and sustains a thirst for knowledge and a love of learning. It covers a wide range of subjects and provides opportunities for academic, technical and sporting excellence. It has a very positive impact on all pupils’ behaviour and safety, and contributes very well to pupils’ academic achievement, their physical wellbeing, and their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.’ Having read this, think about each element of the descriptor. How possible is it for a school to provide an outstanding curriculum without meaningful engagement with and support from parents / carers; employers; sports clubs; health services; emergency services; faith leaders / organisations; charities; cultural organisations; heritage groups; interest groups; authors; poets; politicians / councillorsetc, etc? Learners spend only about 15% of their time in school each year so the school’s curriculum message can easily be drowned out by other influences if the community is not on board. ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ Nigerian proverb

8. Activity 1: Needs for the Twenty-First Century (From Mick Waters ‘Thinking Allowed on Schooling’) Rules of life game A guarantee of experiences The etiquette and tactics for success How much can the community help with each of these ‘rules for life’? Learn to use contacts Assessment to build self-image Qualifications

9. Whose curriculum is it? There can be little confusion as to how the unreformed Gradgrind would have answered this question. Teachers were in possession of the facts and pupils were empty pitchers, ready to be ‘filled to the brim’. There was no need to involve anyone else. Today we know (as did Dickens, of course) that effective learning depends on regarding young people and the curriculum in a different way. A key strategy for ‘democratising’ the curriculum is to ensure it is ‘owned’ by the whole range of stakeholders and not just the professionals. The more the curriculum is regarded as being owned by and equally accessible to all, the better for our learners. The idea of the curriculum as the preserve of education’s elite is clearly not the way to engage young people and optimise the effectiveness of the education system.

10. The Community, Motivation and Curriculum Change A key driver of effective learning is the learner’s sense of ‘agency’. Learners need to believe that they are agents of change, able to make a difference to their own lives, to others and to the world they are growing up in. Community engagement has a highly significant role to play in developing this sense of agency. A curriculum which is obviously relevant to the world outside provides motivation to learn. The interest of ‘real people’ (as learners sometimes describe those outside the school) in the curriculum underlines its importance to life beyond the school gates. As we prepare our young people to become flexible and adaptable so that they can face whatever our fast-changing world has in store for them, community engagement has much to offer in terms of ensuring learning keeps pace with socio-economic and technological change and the realities of the world of work. This cross-fertilisation is necessary to ensure the curriculum undergoes continuous evolution. Teachers cannot expect to be taken seriously as advocates of change and flexibility if the curriculum is rigid and unbending.

11. Over to you…. The intention with this unit is not to give a comprehensive account of the full range of potential strategies for stakeholder and community engagement. Rather it is to highlight the contribution effective engagement can make to a dynamic 21st century curriculum. There is a wealth of good and extremely diverse practice in our schools from which others could benefit and this is where you can help. If you have some practice to share you can do so, as usual, at YOC@NUT.org.uk