We often talk about challenge as if it is a clear idea that everyone understands; my experience is rather different. Its definition alludes us. For this reason, over the course of three articles I want to set out a definition that is deep enough to have durability but flexible enough to be used as a basis for all curriculum design work.
In my last article, I used the analogy of challenge being like architecture – it is rooted in all of the work that goes on in designing a curriculum at each and every stage.
In the spirit of this analogy, I suggested that there are four “floors” or stages to the architectural plans of challenge to support those responsible for subject leaders and teachers who are developing their curriculum plans. The foundations, which I explored last time, is rooting all work in the key concepts of each subject.
This article will describe the next two “floors” of the architectural design of challenge in the curriculum and suggest what they might look like in practice.
Ground floor: Progressively sequenced knowledge
When key concepts are established as the foundations of a curriculum, it is then important to design a curriculum so that knowledge, substantive and disciplinary, is sequenced in small steps. Importantly, this will not always be linear in fashion; sometimes it will be cyclical or iterative or even revisited in more nuanced ways.
Some say that there is a set order for learning knowledge in their subject. This might be truer for some subjects, like maths, than for others, such as history. However, there is likely to be rough, broad order to learning in each subject and it is ultimately guided by three things.
- First, by the overarching curriculum goals of the school. When these are first set, everything else should be moving towards their achievement. Sequencing knowledge in a particular way can be guided by this.
- Second, by the nature of the knowledge itself. If it is substantive, in a subject such as geography, there might be a very set order. If it is disciplinary, in a subject such as history, it might be that it is revisited time and again in increasing levels of depth.
- Third, sequencing knowledge can be guided by expertise such as subject associations and teacher judgement. Each year that goes by, as a curriculum is taught, conversations among teachers about the outcomes for students can inform what to teach and what order.
Fundamentally, what guides the construction of the ground floor of progressively sequenced knowledge is the solid foundations of key concepts.
Progressively sequenced knowledge in practice: English
In an English curriculum, specifically writing, it is crucial that there is a thorough progression of grammar, punctuation, and syntax (sentence structure). Alongside this, it is important that there is a progression of expectations about text type and writing purpose.
Debates go on about what substantive and what disciplinary knowledge is in an English curriculum. For me the former is substantive, since it is the residue knowledge of the subject that drives its application in whole texts. For example, if students are expected to write a story to entertain, there are several disciplinary elements they will need to consider such as using metaphor, advancing the action through speech, and developing a story arc of some kind with increasing complexity.
But none of this can be achieved if students do not have a deep sense of the grammar, punctuation and sentence types and structures they may choose to use to convey their purposes.
Mapping both consistently and carefully over time ensures that new knowledge is always drawn back to original concepts (such as writing for purpose); if new knowledge is gained and applied, we can be sure that each new year brings new challenge as the expectation is raised each year for what should be included and used in stories, for example.
Progressively sequenced knowledge in practice: Music
Progressively sequencing knowledge over time in music might not seem to be as clear as other subjects. Key concepts in this subject could be listening, performing, composing and theory.
Think for a moment about what it takes to listen to a piece of music, to really listen. Students need to not only have the knowledge of the sounds and what instruments play them, but they also need to be able to think through how each instrument connects to make a coherent melodic whole across a span of between a few seconds and up to 10 minutes or more. This is complex work!
Yet, if students, even those who are right at the beginning of their musical learning, cannot discern the different sounds of instruments, what they look like, whether they are string or wind, then they will struggle to compose, or even perform at a later date.
First floor: Units of learning that retrieve, apply, and transfer knowledge across domains
Once key concepts are set out and knowledge is progressively sequenced, it is important for teachers to consider how the knowledge interlocks with other knowledge to enable understanding.
This then leads us to lessons, individual moments of time. By now, hopefully you can see that each lesson does not stand alone. It sits within a large infrastructure of learning.
My claim here, going right back to my first discussion, is very simple. Lessons that should be considered challenging are not the ones that have unique and creative tasks; they are not the ones where students work in silence for 30 minutes; they are not the ones that simply have tasks pitched just right and there are 100 challenge cards for students to complete who finish fast.
The essence of challenge in individual lessons is that they are rooted in conceptual work, driven by the progression of knowledge outlined by the curriculum, that draws together the threads of units of work over time.
This is the most demanding and challenging thing that students can do: retrieve prior knowledge, apply it to new contexts and make links between the elements of their learning through talking, writing, reading and problem-solving. This is the essence of challenge; it is also the essence of a good curriculum.
Of course, there is more to it than this; students should go on to have their own opinion, generate original thought, develop their own links, comparisons, and contrasts.
Professor John Hattie, in his recent work, Visible Learning 2.0 (Hattie, 2023) used the terms “surface, deep and transfer” to describe what I am trying to articulate.
He discussed how lessons over time, within units, should never simply teach surface-level knowledge – it is critical that the knowledge learned is built on over time to ensure understanding but then also applied to new contexts. Without the underpinning concepts and progressively sequenced knowledge, though, this is difficult to achieve.
That’s why this is the “first floor” or our curriculum house rather than the foundations or ground floor of the architecture of challenge.
Retrieving and applying new knowledge in practice: Science
Science as a subject is deeply conceptual but unlike history or geography, is driven by what is observed and measurable. Whereas history and geography, at least in the primary curriculum, is deductive in its reasoning, science is inductive.
Students in science should have the chance to see lots of examples of the topic being studied and then consider what it means for the bigger questions of the unit. They must trust their five senses and reason from there.
A powerful, challenging tool in the primary science curriculum is beginning with concept cartoons, where characters discuss a concept of some kind to generate discussion among a class – whether something is living or not, for example.
Then students can be given lots of opportunity to explore, with strong teacher guidance, observable elements of what we might consider to be living or non-living to test the hypothesis of the characters in the concept cartoon.
Discussion, modelled and guided, can then lead students to debate what they are seeing, touching, noticing. This sort of development in science ensures that students are not only developing their substantive knowledge of living and non-living things, but also developing their disciplinary knowledge of how to be a scientist.
Retrieving and applying new knowledge in practice: RE
When students learn from and about religion in the primary school, there is always the danger that it is surface level and they learn little more than the facts of the beliefs, practices, and places of worship.
For an RE curriculum to be truly challenging, it ought to be designed around underpinning concepts such as beliefs, practices, ethics and so on, as part of a wider understanding that when people practise a religion, it stems from their views of the world. In turn, students should also consider their own worldviews in light of the views of others.
This instantly makes the curriculum more challenging. Students are faced with confronting their own beliefs, practices and attitudes and will need to constantly compare and contrast their views with those of others. This constant comparison between same and different takes the depth of thinking in the RE classroom way beyond simply retrieving prior knowledge; students need to consciously and sensitively draw on their knowledge to reason well and consider the views of others.
Final thoughts
Hopefully it is clear that without the solid foundations of key concepts in each curriculum subject (see article one), the design of knowledge and unit planning is weakened, meaning that the whole structure might not be able to fully reach the potential it has to be challenging. Furthermore, when the knowledge gained and developed over time is not rooted in the key concepts of the subject, students could miss the “big ideas” of the subject; it might even be that the teachers do the same.
In the third and final article on the architecture of challenge (next week), I will consider the second floor of delivery – and how we can know challenge when we see it.
Robbie Burns is a teacher and assistant vice-principal for teaching and learning at Bede Academy in Northumberland. He has written for a range of publications on primary education and curriculum. Read his blog via www.howthenshouldweteach.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @MrRRBurns. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/robbie-burns
Further information & resources
- Hattie: Visible Learning 2.0, Routledge, 2023.