School Based Curriculum Development

by Malcolm Skilbeck

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year is the 50th anniversary of the university that I work in. As part of that I have been asked to help put together a book celebrating the life and work of the university’s second Vice Chancellor, Malcolm Skilbeck. I literally knew nothing of him at all six months ago. But since I’ve been reading as many of his works as I’ve been able to get my hands on – I’ll be trying to review them here over the next few months. Skilbeck was a deeply interesting man, one I’m now sorry I never got the chance to meet. He was deeply involved in education, and not just as a university administrator – but he also did work with the OECD and in Northern Ireland and as a consultant. I’ve also just reviewed one of his books on nature and my boss at work has found some paintings and drawings he produced.

This book is old now, from 1984, but it is still an incredibly interesting discussion on the problems facing the development of curriculum. When I teach students about curriculum I often tell them that we end up being much more bound by our metaphors than we like to think. And this is even true when we don’t even know that they are metaphors. Curriculum comes from Latin – it essentially means racetrack. It is also where we get the term curriculum vitae from – which means basically ‘life course’, rather than ‘why you should employ me’, which, I guess, is what most people now think it means. A racetrack has a cluster of other meanings that then go to shape how we think of the curriculum, because this is a race. Not least that there will be winners and losers. But also that to take a shortcut is to cheat. That we all line up at an equal starting position and that the ‘winner’ is the one with the most merit/ability. These clustered implications constrain how we then go on to deploy the term. At its most basic level, the curriculum is defined as “the learning experiences of students, in so far as they are expressed or anticipated in educational goals and objectives, plans and designs for learning and the implementation of these plans and designs in school environments” (p.21). The link to the metaphor of a racetrack is still retained here – not least in the other aspects of schooling that are time bound – in timetables – or in competitive performances and in the awarding of prizes for achievement.

What does it mean to have a school-based curriculum as the foundation for school reform? Is this even something we wish to strive for? Can we trust teachers with setting the goals for education? And if not teachers, then who should set these goals? This book argues along with John Dewey that education is a primary concern for any civilisation but also that education, as the definition of curriculum given above implies, must be focused upon the needs of the student. These needs are deeply situated and therefore are not identical across society. But that does not mean that the goals of education should be different depending upon the group you happen to be born into. Rather, that to reach the same destination, some students, some schools, will need to pursue significantly different pathways.

These are matters that cannot be left to the decisions of teachers in classrooms alone. People have been trained to accept this as a fact for a couple of reason. One is the ongoing de-professionalisation of teachers, not least because it is a largely feminised workforce. While we all enjoy telling stories of the teacher that changed our lives, we also remember all too well the other teachers who we would not give sole responsibility for deciding what children ought to learn. In fact, if the last few decades of education policy can be defined by any one single trend, it is that of seeking to make the education of children ‘teacher proof’. This has mostly been done by those outside of the profession itself and by those whose main experience of education has been as a student, rather than as a teacher. One of the things I’ve found most interesting about the recent policy documents that have dominated the Australian education scene is how few of these ‘expert teacher panels’ that create these documents have any teachers on them at all. If the pendulum of history is prone to swings, then surely we are at point of maximum displacement away from teacher centred curriculum development.

It could be argued that in an increasingly globalised world, where children will be in competition with the children from other countries they might never meet, that leaving curriculum development local teachers or even local schools sounds like a recipe for disaster. Skilbeck doesn’t shy away from this concern. He is certainly not advocating for schools to stand in pristine isolation from their community, society or the world more generally. However, he doesn’t believe that a one-size-fits-all curriculum is possible or welcome. What he is arguing for is more balance than we currently have – or even had 40 years ago. The lack of trust in teachers, schools and local communities has become a defining feature of the education system – but not one that is in the interests of the students in classrooms, the ultimate clients of this system. What is also obvious is that the students themselves are even more voiceless than their teachers. You might think that this is reasonable, given that they are the recipients of education and that this means they have too little knowledge to make a worthwhile contribution – however, this is not really the case. Young people are often far more aware of the options open and closed to them than their parents or even their teachers. Once they are able to choose courses of study, they often vote with their feet for the curriculum that they believe will offer them the best opportunities in life.

Part of the problem here is that we have set up a dichotomy between school-based curriculum and a core curriculum – and then decided that all of the emphasis should be placed on the core, with schools mandated to merely implement what is contained in that. The core curriculum is then ‘designed by experts’ so that it meets the demands to keep the nation competitive internationally as judged by various rankings. The idea being that teachers in classrooms are too far away from the centre to truly understand what curriculum options would best meet the needs of their own students. That is, that the best way to know the needs of students is to be as far away from them as it is possible to be. This is the opposite of what the last 100 years or so of educational theory has asserted – that is, that we must address the learning of our students at their point of need and adjust our teaching and learning so that it is tailored to those highly particular needs.

Here we can also talk of the ‘hidden’ or ‘effective’ curriculum, again terms that are highly contested. And as Bernstein made clear in his research, the hidden curriculum is often premised on the assumption that the normal student is white, male, middle class and where the education system is a continuation of the social situation of their home life both in manner of education and in forms of discipline and expected behaviour. If the student does not fit this highly cultural location, then they must be made to fit – since any accommodations made for them would immediately be interpreted as devaluing the whole system. That is, meeting students at their point of need is therefore defined out of the system by definition.

In this book, he again uses one of his favourite quotes from Robert Linton, “The individual at birth is a cultural barbarian, in that he has none of the habits, ideas, attitudes and skills characterizing the adult members of society” (p.34). It is therefore the role of the school to indoctrinate the child into the habits and essential knowledge that will make them ready to participate as individuals within that society. But how do you go about achieving this. He is certainly not saying that this should be left solely to teachers. Rather, he sees all levels of society as having a role to play in this process. A core curriculum is one tool in this, but not the sole tool. Teachers, schools and local communities also should have a role here. The problem is that teachers and schools have been so de-professionalised that they cannot be expected to fulfil this role without extensive assistance and professional learning. This reflects something Hattie notes in his research, where reducing class sizes rarely, on its own, results in better teaching practices to take advantage of the new circumstances opened up. A change in circumstance is not enough – what is needed is that this be met with a clear program to meet the new challenges presented. And this is best achieved by a change in the role of teachers towards them being engaged as teacher-researchers.

Here is the other major problem with a centralised curriculum – it is rarely as evidence based as it pretends to be. The level of research supporting the mandated decrees from outside the school are rarely tested by rigorous research or evaluated after implementation to ensure they meet their aims. That is, rather than imposing teacher proof strategies, the point ought to be to provide teachers with the skills so they can assess the needs of their students and develop ways to confirm that the strategies being implemented are actually meeting the needs of the students to reach these aims.

Rather than this being imposed upon the students, the aim of a progressive education should be less structured around the traditional disciplines, and more integrated towards the lived needs of the students. To achieve this, the students themselves need to be active participants – and this can only be truly achieved if they also have an active voice in their own teaching and learning.

A progressive education has been a central demand since Dewey – and it remains progressive, because its implementation has always been hampered by those outside education who believe they already know what is best. The shift towards integrated learning and away from the hierarchical structures based on subject disciplines has too often been reduced to an argument over the rigor of the disciplines against the fluffiness of inquiry-based learning. But given life beyond school is inquiry-based, this dichotomy is a false one.

This is a fascinating discussion of the problems facing education and curriculum studies. The shame is that it is still so relevant today, forty years later. And since Dewey was writing well over 120 years ago – it is starting to look like progressive education will always be an idea whose time is about to come.

[Cynthia]

Mobile view