When the Curriculum and Assessment Review interim report was published in March there was a Conceptual Position Paper published alongside it which made clear that the Review Panel was taking a “philosophical approach to the Review’s work” that was “informed by Joseph Schwab’s conception of ‘the Practical’.” The Paper tells us that “Schwab’s paradigm of the Practical offers a more realistic, respectful and viable method for curriculum reform.”
This adoption of Schwab’s decades-old thinking may mark a departure from the approach of E. D. Hirsch and an emphasis on core knowledge – Michael Gove and Nick Gibb had both been proponents of a Hirschian approach. We thought we had better take our own deep dive into different approaches to the curriculum in relation to Expressive Arts subjects so we asked our Senior Evidence Associate to do just that.
This is the first of three articles by Professor Pat Thomson on what ‘knowledge rich’ means in and for the Arts education community. This piece is not intended to be comprehensive but is a very brief introduction to some of the ways in which knowledge rich can be understood – it necessarily glosses over important complexities. The second article in the series will be published in June and will focus on knowledge richness in the Expressive Arts and in the curriculum.
The national curriculum in England aims to be knowledge rich. The current Curriculum and Assessment Review suggests that the emphasis on knowledge richness will be maintained in the future. However, the term knowledge rich can be interpreted differently. Arguably, Arts educators are advantaged by understanding some of the variations on the theme of knowledge rich.
But first, in order to get to grips with ‘knowledge rich’ it is necessary to address the term ‘curriculum’.
Curriculum
‘Curriculum’ can be understood in multiple ways. The English national curriculum takes the term to mean both a framework and a standard. The curriculum framework includes sequenced programs of study for all subjects across all four key stages. The curriculum standard sets out the attainment targets that must be taught in local authority maintained schools. Schools have the freedom to determine how to organise and teach the curriculum, although whole class teaching, direct instruction and the use of strategies derived from cognitive science are strongly recommended.
This is not the only way to understand ’curriculum’. A national curriculum can be understood in a broader sense – for example, as a social practice which is multi-layered (Priestley, Philippou, Alvunger, & Soini, 2021). From this perspective, the curriculum is much more than content selection; it also includes pedagogy and assessment. This more expansive approach to curriculum recognises the inseparability of purposes, processes, contexts and outcomes (Deng, 2020). But the more generous definition also recognises that the curriculum is made (enacted) by teachers, students and school leaders working together. And the curriculum as it is taught in schools is framed by and works with other sites, organisations and people in an education system (Trifonas & Jagger, 2024). Therefore, what happens in schools and classrooms as curriculum may well be very tightly framed, or much more varied than the coherence that a national framework represents and works to bring into being (Green, 2022).
Arts educator Eliot Eisner proposed three kinds of curriculum (Eisner, 1994) that are taught simultaneously in schools: (1) the explicit curriculum – the official curriculum as published and as formally offered by schools – including subjects, objectives, and documented plans; (2) the implicit or hidden curriculum – what students learn from the ways in which classrooms and the school are organised, school culture values, teacher attitudes and so on, and (3) the null curriculum – the subjects, perspectives and/or ways of thinking that are excluded from schooling but whose absence still affords learning. Eisner was critical of a stand-alone standards and framework approach; he argued that any standards based approach must sit side by side with artistic approaches which valued critical thinking and connoisseurship (Eisner, 2002).
Knowledge rich
The notion of a knowledge-rich curriculum sits comfortably with a framework and standards approach.1 In England, the approach taken to knowledge rich is informed by E D Hirsch (Hirsch, 2006). Hirsch argues there is a body of background knowledge all educated citizens need to function effectively in society. This ‘cultural literacy’ enables people to participate fully in civic life as well as read with understanding. Hirsch holds that a knowledge-rich curriculum is essential for educational equity and that disadvantaged students particularly benefit from explicit teaching of the knowledge that advantaged students often acquire at home. A Hirschian approach to curriculum specifies content that students should learn in each subject and grade level. Content is organised in a coherent, cumulative sequence, building systematically year by year to develop both knowledge and skills. The Hirschian approach taken in England has been to select some knowledges as more important than others; the division of subjects into core and foundation and the development of the Education Baccalaureate standard performance measure both signify that the Arts are of lesser importance (Neumann, Gewirtz, Maguire, & Towers, 2020).
Hirsch’s ideas have been influential but also controversial. Critics suggest his approach supports the transmission of information, rather than diverse ways to acquire knowledges.2 Others argue that his approach is too prescriptive, is elitist, assumes all children learn the same linear way and is Western-centric (Nightingale, 2020; Shamshayooadeh, 2011). Arts educators in particular are highly critical of the idea of a fixed canon of knowledge, even if broadly sympathetic to the idea of cultural literacy.
Hirsch is not the only knowledge game in town. Young and Muller (Muller & Young, 2019; Young & Muller, 2013) take an alternative approach to a knowledge-rich curriculum. While they support subject-based teaching, they are critical of what they call a ‘knowledge of the powerful’ approach. They compare this to a curriculum that is ‘powerful knowledge’. Young and Muller argue for disciplinary knowledges which allow young people to understand the world that they live in. Access to powerful disciplinary knowledges is a social justice issue, they say, because these give students thinking tools that transcend everyday experience. Young and Muller see knowledge as always being debated and changed rather than being universal and fixed. They propose a “Future 3” curriculum which avoids traditional rigid knowledge transmission (“Future 1”) and an extreme constructivist dissolution of knowledge boundaries (“Future 2”). In their Futures 3 curriculum, knowledge and skills cannot be separated (Young, Lambert, Roberts, & Roberts, 2014).
Arts educators may find the idea of a Futures 3 curriculum of more interest than Hirsch, because it recognises: the importance of specialist disciplines; professional knowledges; the integration of knowledge and skills; and a more contingent approach to knowledge (Young & Muller, 2014). But although Muller and Young’s take on knowledge brings together propositional and procedural knowing, Arts educators may find it difficult to accept their prioritisation of knowledge over pedagogy, and the separation of what students are to know from how it will be taught.
There are of course many other people who have thought about knowledge and curriculum. For example, John Dewey. Dewey is often associated with a child-centred approach very different from a whole class teaching and direct instruction approach. However, Dewey’s many writings on experience elaborate how knowledge gained from, through and in practice (e.g. Dewey, 1929; Dewey, 1938). Dewey argued that the Arts were a crucial resource for developing experience-based knowledge (Dewey, 1938). A Deweyian approach to a knowledge-rich curriculum is likely to bring together knowledges based in reflections on experience with formal codified knowledges. An experience-based approach to knowledge does not sit easily with a Hirschian approach although it is more compatible with Young and Muller’s Futures 3 curriculum.
Another take on knowledge comes from Gert Biesta. Biesta is critical of approaches which focus primarily on learning at the expense of teaching – he calls this the ‘learnification’ of education (Biesta, 2006). Biesta is also critical of educational approaches that try to eliminate risk and uncertainty from learning ( e.g. Hirsch) (Biesta, 2010). He sees a policy emphasis on measurement, standardisation, and predictable outcomes as fundamentally opposed to what education generally and Arts education in particular can offer – the unpredictable, transformative experience of encountering art. He emphasises the ways in which Arts education can help students engage meaningfully with the world around them (Biesta, 2017). Thus, while Biesta sees a strong place for knowledge in the curriculum, particularly in relation to students acquiring necessary qualifications, he not only rejects the standards-framework approach but also argues strongly for the important role of ‘subjectification’ – students becoming and being subjects capable of critical thought and action, rather than objects to be acted on. Biesta sees the Arts and their knowledges as highly significant in the formation of subjects.
This is not an exhaustive list of ways to think about knowledge. It is, I hope, enough to suggest that there may be some mileage in thinking broadly about knowledge richness in the Expressive Arts and in the curriculum. To that end, the second piece in this series will be a small thought experiment which does exactly this.
- This is not the approach taken in Scotland or Wales. ↩︎
- For example, see Christine Counsell’s work on knowledge richness in the humanities https://theeducationhub.org.nz/the-importance-of-a-knowledge-rich-curriculum-a-presentation-by-christine-counsell/ ↩︎
References
Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning:. Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. London: Routledge.
Biesta, G. (2017). What if? Art education beyond expression and creativity. In C. Naughton, G. Biesta, & D. Cole (Eds.), Art, artists and pedagogy. Philosophy and the arts in education. (pp. 11-20). London: Routledge.
Deng, Z. (2020). Knowledge, content, curriculum and didaktik. New York: Routledge.
Dewey, J. (1929). Experience and nature (1958 ed.). New York: Dover.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education (1963 ed.). New York: Collier Books.
Eisner, E. (1994). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Eisner, E. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Green, B. (2022). Understanding curriculum as practice, or on the practice turn(s) in curriculum inquiry. Curriculum Perspectives, 42, 77-83.
Hirsch, E. D. (2006). The knowledge deficit. Closing the shocking education gap for American children. New York: Houghton Miflin.
Muller, J., & Young, M. F. D. (2019). Knowledge, power and powerful knowledge revisited. The Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 196-214.
Neumann, E., Gewirtz, S., Maguire, M., & Towers, E. (2020). Neoconservative education policy and the case of the English Baccalaureate. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 702-709.
Nightingale, P. (2020). ‘As if by osmosis’: How Ofsted’s new deficit model emerged, fully formed, as cultural capital. . Power and Education, 12(3), 232-245.
Priestley, M., Philippou, S., Alvunger, D., & Soini, T. (2021). Curriculum making: A conceptual framing. In M. Priestley, S. Philippou, D. Alvunger, & T. Soini (Eds.), Curriculum making in Europe: policy and practice within and across diverse contexts (pp. 1-28). Bingley: Emerald.
Shamshayooadeh, G. (2011). Cultural literacy in the new millennium: Revisiting ED Hirsch. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(8), 273-277.
Trifonas, P., & Jagger, S. (Eds.). (2024). Handbook of curriculum theory, research and practice. New York: Springer.
Young, M., Lambert, D., Roberts, C., & Roberts, M. (2014). Knowledge and the future school. Curriculum and social justice. London: Bloomsbury.
Young, M., & Muller, J. (2013). On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1(3), 229-250.
Young, M., & Muller, J. (Eds.). (2014). Knowledge, expertise and the professions. London: Routledge.
Image – Curious Minds: Rhyme & Reason
