Reinventing the Curriculum Also Available From Bloomsbury England’s Citizenship Education Experiment: State, School and Student Perspectives, Lee Jerome Literacy on the Left: Reform and Revolution, Andrew Lambirth Reinventing the Curriculum New Trends in Curriculum Policy and Practice Mark Priestley and Gert Biesta LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Contributors, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as authors of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. EISBN: 978-1-4411-4868-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Contents List of Contributors viii 1 Introduction: The New Curriculum Mark Priestley and Gert Biesta 1 Introduction 1 Emerging curricula 2 The book 6 2 The Origins and Development of Curriculum for Excellence: Discourse, Politics and Control Walter Humes 13 Introduction 13 Background and rationale 14 Values and discourse 19 Process and development 23 Discussion 26 3 Capacities and the Curriculum Gert Biesta and Mark Priestley 35 Introduction 35 The idea of capacities in the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence 37 The student as a learning outcome: Capacities and competences 38 Five critical questions 42 Concluding remarks 46 4 The Successful Learner: A Progressive or an Oppressive Concept? Jenny Reeves 51 Introduction 51 The origins and evolution of the learner 52 Localizing the discourse – how Scottish policymakers made sense of ‘the learner’, 2004–10 60 Conclusion 68 5 Confident Individuals: The Implications of an ‘Emotional Subject’ for Curriculum Priorities and Practices Kathryn Ecclestone 75 Introduction 75 vi Contents Confidence as a high-stakes educational and social goal 77 Changing the subject 84 The effects of an ‘emotional’ subject on curriculum priorities and practices 87 Conclusions 93 6 Responsible Citizens: Citizenship Education between Social Inclusion and Democratic Politics Gert Biesta 99 Introduction 99 Citizenship education in Scotland: The socio-historical context 100 Characterizing citizenship and citizenship education 102 Is the responsible citizen a democratic citizen? 111 Conclusions 114 7 Effective Contributors: Evaluating the Potential for Children and Young People’s Participation in their Own Schooling and Learning E. Kay M. Tisdall 117 Effective contributors 117 Children and young people’s participation 119 Understandings of participation 121 What do we know about children and young people’s participation in Scottish schools? 124 Moving forward? 129 Conclusion 133 8 Emerging International Trends in Curriculum Claire Sinnema and Graeme Aitken 141 Commonalities in national curricula 141 The goals of curriculum policy reform 142 Commonalities in the emphases of recently revised national curricula 146 Discussion 156 9 Developing the Teacher – or Not? Ian Menter and Moira Hulme 165 Introduction 165 Curricular and pedagogical reform 165 Linking curriculum and pedagogy: The Scottish case 169 Re- or de-professionalization? 180 Conclusion 181 Contents vii 10 Teachers as Agents of Change: Teacher Agency and Emerging Models of Curriculum Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson 187 Introduction 187 Defining and theorizing teacher agency 188 Achieving agency (1): The role of values and beliefs 191 Achieving agency (2): The role of relationships 197 Concluding comments 203 11 High-Stakes Assessment and New Curricula: A Queensland Case of Competing Tensions in Curriculum Development Bob Lingard and Glenda McGregor 207 Introduction 207 Contextualizing the development of the New Basics in Queensland 212 The New Basics: Producing new workers and new citizens 215 Changing contexts: From New Basics to Queensland Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting (QCAR) Framework 218 The National Schooling Agenda: National Curriculum and NAPLAN 220 NAPLAN 2008, the masters review and the conservative restoration in Queensland schooling 222 Conclusion: From New Basics to teaching and learning audits and discipline-based curriculum 224 12 A Curriculum for the Twenty-First Century? Gert Biesta and Mark Priestley 229 Introduction 229 Wider sociopolitical trends shaping the curriculum field 230 Conclusion: A curriculum for the twenty-first century? 234 Index 237 List of Contributors Graeme Aitken is the Dean of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research has focused on teaching effectiveness, and on curriculum development and design. He aims, through his work, to offer insights into practice that help decision-making by policymakers, schools and teachers in the best interests of learners and learning. Gert Biesta (www.gertbiesta.com) is currently Professor of Educational Theory and Policy at the University of Luxembourg, having previously worked in the Netherlands and the UK. He has published widely on the theory and philosophy of education and educational research and is particularly interested in relationships between education and democracy. His research has focused on citizenship education, teaching and teachers, curriculum theory and practice, and adult and vocational education. Recent books include Good Education in an Age of Measurement (2010) and The Beautiful Risk of Education (2013), both with Paradigm Publishers USA. Kathryn Ecclestone is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research explores the effects of policy on everyday assessment and teaching, curriculum content and knowledge, and attitudes to learning in post-compulsory education, with a particular interest in the impact of government intervention in ‘emotional well-being’ on educational goals, activities and outcomes. Books include The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (2009) and Transforming Formative Assessment in Lifelong Learning (2010). Kathryn is a member of EdExcel/Pearson’s expert group on assessment and is on the editorial boards of Studies in the Education of Adults and Assessment in Education. Moira Hulme is a Lecturer in Educational Research at the School of Education, University of Glasgow, UK. She has undertaken research commissioned by the Scottish Government, General Teaching Council of Scotland and Learning and Teaching Scotland (now Education Scotland). Recent studies include teachers’ response to draft curriculum guidance, professional culture among new entrants to the teaching profession and pupil participation in Scottish schools. Moira is convenor of the Teacher Education and Development Special Interest Group of the British Educational Research Association. List of Contributors ix Walter Humes is currently Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Stirling, UK. Prior to his retirement in 2010, Walter Humes held professorships at the Universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland, UK. His publications include work on teacher education, educational leadership and management, history of education and policy studies. He is co-editor of Scottish Education, a 1,000-page text on all sectors of the Scottish educational system, the 4th edition of which will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2013. Bob Lingard works in the School of Education at The University of Queensland, Australia, where he researches in sociology of education. He has been Chair of the Governing Board of the Queensland Studies Authority, is currently on the Governing Board of the Authority and is Chair of the Board’s Curriculum Committee. Bob is Editor of the journal, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. His most recent books include Boys and Schooling (Palgrave, 2009), co-authored with Wayne Martino and Martin Mills, Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge, 2010), co-authored with Fazal Rizvi, and Changing Schools (Routledge, 2012), co-edited with Terry Wrigley and Pat Thomson. In 2013, Routledge will publish his Selected Works as Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education. Glenda McGregor is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, where she is Convenor of the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) programme. For many years she has worked closely with the Queensland Studies Authority in the development of curriculum in that state and was also a member of the advisory committee for the development of the Australian Curriculum in History. Her research interests include sociology of youth, alternative schools, pedagogy and curriculum and, social justice and education. She is currently working on two major research projects on alternative and democratic models of schooling funded by the Australian Research Council. Ian Menter (AcSS) is Professor of Teacher