What Should Schools Teach? Schools Should What ‘This book brings profound questions about what children need to know back to the centre of educational enquiry where they belong. The additional chapters in this second edition knowledge and the curriculum are excellent. We all need to read it.’– Professor Elizabeth Rata, University of Auckland The design of school curriculums involves deep thought about the nature of knowledge and its value to learners and society. It is a serious responsibility that raises a number of questions. What is knowledge for? What knowledge is important for children to learn? How do we decide what knowledge matters in each school subject? And how far should the knowledge Edited by Alka Sehgal Cuthbert we teach in school be related to academic disciplinary knowledge? These and many other questions are taken up in What Should Schools Teach? and Alex Standish The blurring of distinctions between pedagogy and curriculum, and between experience and knowledge, has served up a confusing message for teachers about the part that each plays in the education of children. Schools teach through subjects, but there is little consensus about what constitutes a subject and what they are for. This book aims to dispel confusion through a What robust rationale for what schools should teach that offers key understanding to teachers of the relationship between knowledge (what to teach) and their own pedagogy (how to teach), and how both need to be informed by values of intellectual freedom and autonomy. Should This second edition includes new chapters on Chemistry, Drama, Music and Religious Education, and an updated chapter on Biology. A revised introduction reflects on emerging discourse around decolonizing the curriculum, and on the relationship between the Alex Standish Alex Cuthbert Alka Sehgal knowledge that children encounter at school and in their homes. by Edited Schools Alka Sehgal Cuthbert has spent more than 20 years as an English teacher at secondary level and lecturer in Cultural Studies in higher education. She currently works part-time as an English teacher for the educational charity, Civitas, and writes on educational issues. Teach? Alex Standish is Associate Professor of Geography Education at the UCL Institute of Disciplines, subjects Education and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He works in teacher training and supervises students at Master’s and doctoral level. and the pursuit of truth Second edition Cover image: Michael Pettet, www.michaelpettet.com Free open access version available from Cover design: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press www.ironicitalics.com What Should Schools Teach? KNOWLEDGE AND THE CURRICULUM Series editors Arthur Chapman, Cosette Crisan, Jennie Golding and Alex Standish, UCL Institute of Education The series promotes research, theorizing and critical discussion about what we teach in schools and in teacher education. It explores the nature of knowledge in contemporary societies, academic disciplines, school subjects and other fields of knowledge production, to foster inquiry into the relationships that can and should exist between knowledge- disciplines in schools and elsewhere. Knowledge and the Curriculum aims to become a central hub for investigation into how disciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity can enable schools, teacher trainers and learners to address the challenges of the twenty-first century in knowledgeable and critically informed ways. The series explores questions about the powers of knowledge, relationships between the distribution of knowledge and knowledge resources in society, and matters of equity in access to justice and democratization. It is committed to the proposition that the answers to questions about knowledge require new thinking and innovation. These are open questions with answers that are not already known, and which are likely to entail significant social and institutional change to make the powers of knowledge and of knowing equally available to all. The series emerged from the Subject Specialism Research Group at the UCL Institute of Education and a major international network of curriculum theorists (KOSS) centred around research groups in Karlstad (ROSE) and Helsinki (HuSoEd). It draws upon the expertise of all three research groups for its editors and advisory board. Series advisers Gabriel Bladh, University of Karlstad Zongyi Deng, UCL Institute of Education Jan Derry, UCL Institute of Education Niklas Gerrike, University of Karlstad Brian Hudson, University of Sussex David Lambert, UCL Institute of Education Christina Olin-Scheller, University of Karlstad Eero Salmenkivi, University of Helsinki Sirpa Tani, University of Helsinki Michael Young, UCL Institute of Education What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth 2nd edition Edited by Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish First published in 2021 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Collection © Editors, 2021 Text © Contributors, 2021 Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2021 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Sehgal Cuthbert, A. and Standish, A. (eds.) (2021) What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth. 2nd ed. London: UCL Press. https://doi. org/10.14324/111.9781787358744 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creative commons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-876-8 (Hbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-875-1 (Pbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-874-4 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-877-5 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-878-2 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787358744 Contents List of figures vii List of abbreviations ix Notes on contributors xi Foreword xvii Tim Oates Introduction to the second edition 1 Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish 1 Disciplinary knowledge and its role in the school curriculum 15 Alka Sehgal Cuthbert 2 School subjects 38 Alex Standish 3 English literature 54 Alka Sehgal Cuthbert 4 Art 73 Dido Powell 5 Drama 89 Martin Robinson 6 Music 103 Simon Toyne 7 Foreign languages 122 Shirley Lawes 8 Geography 137 Alex Standish 9 History 154 Christine Counsell CONTENTS v 10 Religious education 174 Rania Hafez 11 Biology 189 Fredrik Berglund and Michael J. Reiss 12 Chemistry 202 Gareth Bates 13 Physics 218 Gareth Sturdy 14 Mathematics 234 Cosette Crisan Conclusion 251 Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish Index 260 vi WHAT SHOULD SCHOOLS TEACH? List of figures 1.1 Hierarchical knowledge structures within vertical discourse (Martin et al., 2010, 438; reproduced by permission) 29 1.2 Structure of knowledge progress in aesthetics (image by the author) 34 2.1 The didactic triangle (Hudson, 2014) 44 4.1 The Virgin and Child from the Pisa Polyptych, Masaccio, 1426, panel 134.8 × 73.5 cm (Reproduced by permission of the National Gallery, London) 79 4.2 The Death of Sardanapalus, Delacroix, 1827, 392 × 496 cm (Reproduced by permission of the Louvre, Paris) 82 4.3 Still Life with Chair Caning, Picasso, 1912, 27 × 35 cm (Musée National Picasso, Paris. © Succession Picasso/ DACS, London 2017. Reproduced by permission) 85 6.1 A musical school (Rogers, 2019) 106 6.2 The relationship between practice and musical grade (Sloboda et al., 1996, 300. Reproduced by permission of Wiley) 107 6.3 A model of learning for KS3 Music, Hampshire Music Service (Rogers, 2015) 111 8.1 Conceptualizing systematic and regional geography (image by the author) 143 8.2 Sub-disciplines of systematic geography and their relationship to regional geography (Nijman et al., 2020) 144 14.1 Pascal’s triangle (image by the author) 246 LIST OF FIGURES vii List of abbreviations ABRSM Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music A level Advanced level examination taken at ages 17–18 AO Assessment Objective – related to examination structure BME Black and minority ethnic BTEC Business and Technology Education Council (qualification) CCEA Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment – public body of the Department of Education, based in Northern Ireland but also covers England and Wales CLT Communicative Language Teaching CoRE Commission on Religious Education CSE Certificate of Secondary Education – exam taken by the majority of pupils at the age of 16. Superseded by GCSE exams, which were introduced in 1988. DCSF Department for Children, Schools and Families (changed to Department for Education following 2010 General Election) DfE Department for Education, covers England (with devolved counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) EBacc English Baccalaureate qualification – comprising of GCSEs in maths, English literature and language, science, history or geography and a foreign language EEC European Economic Community (which became the European Union in 1992) GCSE General Certificate in Secondary Education – a unitary exam system introduced to replace the dual exam system of O levels and CSEs. First exams were conducted in 1988. GIS Geographical Information System HMI Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools ISM Incorporated Society of Musicians JCQ Joint Council for Qualifications LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix KS Key Stages refer to the organization of England’s curriculum according to ages. In Northern Ireland the curriculum is similar except for the Foundation Stage that covers Years 1 and 2 (ages 4–6).