I’m interested in where ideas come from. In fact, the title of my thesis for my MA in Modern History was Educational Ideas in Mid to Late Victorian Britain: their origin and application. In it, I managed to show the link between what philosophers had been discussing in the 17th/18th centuries and how it impacted on the introduction of compulsory schooling in England. As part of my ongoing work for my Ed.D. (also at the University of Durham) I want to look at where a specific idea/proposal/vision has come from: the QCA Futures in Action initiative.

I’ll actually be writing this blog post as I do my research, so let me first of all make a prediction. I believe that the QCA document will be influenced by the the ideas of one (maybe two) professors of education in England and will have reached consensus at a meeting somewhere. This professor, in turn, will have been influenced by work done in the USA, France, and Australia/New Zealand. The stimulus for this work will have come from an international body such as UNESCO which will, in turn, have produced a book or series of pamphlets resulting from work on societal change. The trouble is – and this is what I expect to find – that this work will have been done around 10-15 years ago and, in 2006, we’re still 10 years away from its implementation. That would mean a 25-year turnaround from identification of a need for change to its implementation. :o

The goal of the QCA Futures in Action programme is to:

…develop a modern, world-class curriculum that will inspire and challenge all learners and prepare them for the future. One of the ways we are trying to achieve this is by working with schools to help them to develop and improve their curriculum. We encourage them to focus on three curriculum questions:

• What are we trying to achieve for our young people through the curriculum?
• How can we best put together a curriculum experience that will enable us to achieve our aims for young people?
• How will we evaluate whether our curriculum is working?

A disclosure before we move on: my current school is going through the process of collecting information and deciding upon ways we can move forward with this initiative. Most of what I’ve seen involves somewhat head-in-the-sand behaviour instead of the blue-skies thinking I’d like to encourage. Tinkering with schemes of work is not going to bring about the fundamental change which I believe underpins this initiative. But I might be wrong… ;)

The QCA (Qualifications Curriculum Authority) has produced what they call the ‘big picture’ which is central to the work being done on the Futures in Action programme:

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In my opinion, this attempt at trying to fit together some of the less than joined-up thinking by various groups in charge of education in the UK is actually a bit of a mess when it comes down to it. A quick Google search for “successful learners” “confident individuals” “responsible citizens” reveals that there is a fourth curriculum aim which is usually bandied about with these three – “effective contributors”. It seems strange that this has been missed off the ‘big picture’…

Most of the websites that include references to these four curriculum aims are Scottish in origin. Digging a bit deeper I discovered the Curriculum for Excellence, which is ‘the Scottish Executive’s vision for transforming Scottish education by 2007′. There’s a nice diagram on their website which shows what they are trying to achieve:

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Rather usefully, there is a specific page on their website dedicated to research literature. The reviews of research-based literature were done by academics at the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow. Their work was primarily subject-based, so no overarching literature informing their work was apparent. Unfortunately, the report itself does not mention more general influences either.

Going back to the QCA ‘big picture’, the next row in the What are we trying to achieve? section is the Every Child Matters framework (through which schools are now inspected by Ofsted). The 2003 Every Child Matters green paper (which was followed by the 2004 Every Child Matters: change for children) was prompted by the public outcry over the failings which led to the death of Victoria Climbié. Although the green paper includes many sentences that being ‘research shows…’ no evidence is actually presented to back up these statements. The first mention of the five Every Child Matters outcomes comes in the green paper on page 11 where it is stated:

When we consulted children, young people and families, they wanted the Government to set out a positive vision of the outcomes we want to achieve. The five outcomes which mattered most to children and young people were:

• Being Healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle.
• Staying Safe: being protected from harm and neglect.
• Enjoying and Achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood.
• Making a Positive Contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour.
• Economic Well-Being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life.

I’m sceptical: this seems like the rhetoric and spin of politicians to me rather than the result of objective research. I certainly cannot find any proven evidence base for these five outcomes; it’s my suspicion that policies the government wanted to bring in anyway have been brought in through the back door.

The final row in the What are we trying to achieve? section of the QCA ‘big picture’ is ‘Whole curriculum skills, knowledge and attributes’. This is divided down into developing individuals ‘To do’, ‘To Know and Understand’ and ‘To Be’. Although a Google search proved fruitless, this reminded me of something I had read recently in Learning: the treasure within, a report published by UNESCO in 1996. Sure enough, a search on my wiki for ‘UNESCO’ turned up an article within that work entitled The Four Pillars of Learning by Jacques Delors. Whilst the QCA ‘big picture’ focuses on only three areas, Delors (p.86) identifies four ‘pillars’ to education in the 21st century:

• Learning to know (“acquiring the instruments of understanding”)
• Learning to do (“so as to be able to act creatively on one’s environment”)
• Learning to live together (“so as to participate and co-operate with other people in all human activities”)
• Learning to be (“an essential progression which proceeds from the previous three”)

It surprises me that – if indeed this was the origin of the row in QCA’s ‘big picture – that learning to live together was left out, especially given the government’s current penchant for citizenship in UK schools.

The bottom two sections on the QCA ‘big picture’ are How to organize learning? and How well are we achieving our aim? Whilst the latter is couched in terms of government targets (reduced NEET – Not in Employment, Education or Training – etc.) there seems to be some mileage in analyzing where the ideas underpinning the former have originated. There are four sub-sections to this:

1. Components (lessons, location, events, etc.)
2. Learning Approaches (enquiry, active learning, business links, etc.)
3. Areas of Learning (ethical, environmental, scientific, etc.)
4. National Curriculum (subjects – English, Maths, Science, History, ICT, etc.)

I have another version of the ‘big picture’, given to me at a School Priorities Group meeting, upon which extra symbols have been added. These also featured on a slide in a September 2006 presentation given by Mick Waters, curriculum director of QCA:

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Laughably – in my opinion – additional ’spiritual’ and ‘international’ aspects have been grafted on or ‘identified’ (as QCA would put it) in the ‘components’ and ‘National Curriculum’ sub-sections. Whilst it would seem that every subject and component has a ’spiritual’ aspect, according to QCA you cannot learn an ‘international aspect’ from a learning event… :s

To conclude, it would seem that there are two possible angles from which you could look at the QCA ‘big picture’. The first is to say that it is a synthesis of government priorities based on public demand (Every Child Matters outcomes), research evidence (curriculum aims from A Curriculum for Excellence) and a recognition of skills needed for the 21st century (whole curriculum skills, knowledge and attributes from The Four Pillars of Education). The second view is that it is a hodge-podge of soundbites and neat-sounding lists of ideas from a number of organizations which bear little resemblance to classroom practice. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one I subscribe to… :p

So, coming back to my initial idea of how ideas flow through education, it would seem that I was wrong! Instead of:

…which is how I think it should be, we get:

A lot messier, and perhaps more messy than it should be. What do you think? I’d be interested in your comments… :D

(Photo credit: 4 chairs-st. albertus school classroom 1917 at Flickr)