Types Of Knowledge In The WA Curriculum

By Alice Hall & Ruhina Cockar

Ruth Ashbee defines curriculum as “knowledge structured over time”, so what do we mean by knowledge?

Different educational experts categorise knowledge in different ways. We may have heard knowledge referred to by different labels and at times the overlap between seemingly discrete ‘categories’ can be confusing. Subject to subject, we may also categorise knowledge slightly differently, so, at times, the labels may be slightly blurred. What is important as teachers, is that we understand the different types of knowledge, how they apply to our subjects, and how we incorporate them into our teaching. 

How are the types of knowledge defined? 

Types of knowledge can include:

• Declarative knowledge

• Substantive knowledge

• Procedural knowledge

• Disciplinary knowledge

• Tacit knowledge

  
  

“Substantive knowledge is the content that teachers teach as established fact – whether common convention, concept or warranted account of reality. You might want pupils to know of crotchets, percentages, the Treaty of Waitangi, Debussy or stem cells. In calling this ‘substantive’, we are treating the material presented as givens.

Disciplinary knowledge, by contrast, is a curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists or professional practice. It is that part of the subject where pupils understand each discipline as a tradition of enquiry with its own distinctive pursuit of truth. It describes that part of the curriculum where pupils learn about the conditions under which valid claims can be made, and associated conventions such as what constitutes evidence or argument in that subject” (Counsell, 2020).

Procedural knowledge is a term that often accompanies declarative knowledge. Sometimes the definition of these two terms is given as ‘know how’ and ‘know what’. Procedural knowledge is the understanding of how something is done, the series of steps or actions taken to accomplish a goal, for example, following a recipe of set steps to create a meal. Some procedural knowledge is domain-specific (such as the understanding of using baking powder as a raising agent to bake a cake) and some is transferable across disciplines (such as plotting graphs, skills that may be taught in both Geography and Maths). 

Tacit knowledge can be much harder for students to describe. Sometimes called lived knowledge, tacit knowledge is often inferred and developed through lived experiences. Students may know, for example, that their friend is sad, but may struggle to articulate why (dropped facial expression, slouched posture, muted tone of voice, etc). Tacit knowledge can be very important in the learning process, however is often difficult for students to articulate in an explicit manner. 

How does Ofsted want us to use this understanding about types of knowledge? 

Ofsted refers to research from educational psychologist Sweller who states that, “Learning can be defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned”. However, transfer to long-term memory depends on rich processes. In order to develop understanding, pupils connect new knowledge with existing knowledge. Pupils also need to develop fluency and unconsciously apply their knowledge as skills. This must not be reduced to, or confused with, simply memorising facts.

In terms of how schools are expected to demonstrate this, Professor Daniel Muijis, Ofsted’s Deputy Director of Research and Evaluation said “It’s what you do, not how you label it that matters.” Schools will not be judged on whether they organise their knowledge under the labels ‘disciplinary’ and ‘substantive’ or any other organisational principles. They will, however, be asked about ‘what they do’ and as long as an approach or approaches can be explained clearly and is shown to be helpful in the school’s curriculum design work, then curriculum design can be judged to be effective.

How does this fit with the WA vision for the curriculum?

The WA curriculum, including the personal development curriculum, will support student success by ensuring that they know, do, and understand more. Effective road-mapping will help students link and relate topics to prior and future learning, building the metacognitive skills to become successful enquirers. Student-centred learning will be promoted through successful independent practice and the practical application of knowledge. This will be supported by appropriate instruction, modelling, scaffolding and guided practice. Our curriculum will be both a mirror and a window, reflecting all members of our community whilst challenging preconceptions and equipping students with the skills and experience to think critically.

Subject leaders and teachers should be able to distinguish and understand what the different types of knowledge are for their subjects. This should be guiding their curriculum design and therefore clearly expressed in unit plans and lesson planning. Students should be able to express their understanding through what they know, how they know it and how they might be able to attempt a problem (metacognitive understanding). Keep in mind that types of knowledge may look different from subject to subject, and it is important to consider how this may impact the teaching and learning in your subject area. 

Questions to consider: 

• What are the facts and methods that should make up the curriculum? What are the links between them?

• What is the necessary prior knowledge needed in order to access a particular topic?

• What are the features of excellent writing in a particular topic? How should these be mapped and explicitly taught across the curriculum?

• How can I continually review and develop our curriculum? 

  
  

References

Birgit Muskat and Marg Deery, 2017.  “Knowledge  transfer  and  organizational  memory:  An  events perspective”. Event Management 21(4), pp. 431–447. 

Christine Counsell, 2020. https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/taking-curriculum- seriously/  

Christine Counsell and Daniel Mujis, 2022 https://trivium21c.com/2020/01/26/ofsted-and- knowledge/ 

Ofsted Music Subject Review, 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research- review-series-music 

Ofsted Art aide memoire (in Third Space Learning), 2022. https://thirdspacelearning.com/ blog/ofsted-crib-sheets/ 

Primary Science Education Consultants, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= eduvDOHH3UQ

Bitesize Research: Impact Of The IB On Students Going To University

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far - and have a restful and joyful break when it comes around. This term, with Sixth Form Open Evening, and with lots of YR11 Post-16 progression work taking place, we’ve been thinking lots about how to continually highlight the amazing benefits of an IB Post-16 education. As such, in this final bitesize of T2 and of 2022, I wanted to share some recent research published by the IB about students who have taken both the DP and CP programmes and their successes at university.

Objectives: To understand the impact of the IB programmes on students going to university 

Summary: 

• In the UK, students taking the IB were three times more likely to enrol in a top 20 university than their A level counterparts

• Students who have taken IB programmes were also more likely to obtain a 1st or 2:1 degree, as well as study at postgraduate level

• UK IB students were also more likely to have greater levels of critical thinking than their counterparts doing other programmes

• There is also compelling evidence about the impact of the CP programme on UK students going to university. For example, the research suggests that 70% of CP alumni obtain a 1st or 2:1 degree. 

• CP students also self-reported as having strong academic, work-related and personal skills.

  
  

How does this impact me and my practice?: 

Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How confident do I feel in explaining the benefits of an IB education to our students?

• What information or support do I need to help me with this?

 

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you! Have a lovely break, and wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Bitesize Research: Using Metacognition In Written Tasks

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Given its central importance in supporting student progress and learning, metacognition is something we’ve had lots of blog posts about. To add to this growing area, I was interested to see an Edutopia article focusing on the benefits of metacognition for writing skills. Objectives: To consider specific strategies for using metacognition in written tasks. Summary:

• The author suggests finding ways to encourage students to consider how they approach writing, what the barriers to writing might be, and strategies that help them to write successfully.
• The author suggests that these areas are important in addition to a rubric or success criteria
• The author recommends a number of ways to support metacognitive writing:
• 1) Keeping a journal or diary - this is where students take breaks during a longer writing process to write down their thoughts about the barriers, strategies and approaches they are taking.
• 2) Making a list of strategies - encouraging students to create an ongoing list of strategies they use when writing
• 3) Writing collaboratively - with the teacher, or with peers. Students can discuss the choices they are making in deliberate ways.
• 4) Using a graphic organiser - to collate thoughts about writing over time or during the writing process for a particular piece of work
• 5) Reflecting after writing - focussing on the ‘big picture’ with questions such as ‘what would you do differently if writing again? Why?’ or ‘what strategies did you use that worked well? How do you know?’

How does this impact me and my practice?: 

Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using metacognitive strategies to support student learning?
• Which of these metacognitive writing strategies can I incorporate into my practice? What support do I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thoughts From A Visiting Teacher: University of Leiden

By Luca, Britt, Doris, Lola and Myrthe

We are students from the Netherlands in our second-last year to become teachers at the University of Applied Sciences Leiden. Last November 15^th we visited Westminster Academy to experience the differences and similarities between the British and the Dutch school systems. We were excited and learned a lot. We had a great time because of all the nice people we met. 
 
The first thing we noticed are the school uniforms. In the Netherlands it’s normal to wear casual clothing to school. Teachers are required to dress presentable, but whether you do that wearing a dress, a skirt or jeans doesn’t matter. Children are allowed to choose how to dress. To us it was a new experience to see all the students wearing uniforms and for all the teachers to be in business dress.
 
Another concept we are not familiar with, is the houses. Houses and house points are things we only recognise from the Harry Potter books. To see it in real life was a special experience for us. Something we noticed about Westminster Academy is the self-made lessons that are taught. In the Netherlands it’s normal for a school to have pre-made lesson plans. Teachers don’t usually make their own lessons. In the Netherlands they are trying to encourage teachers to find a balance in making lessons and using the pre-made lesson plans. The teachers at Westminster Academy showed us the joy of teaching self-made lessons and that the children can really benefit from it. 
 
After we had seen a few lessons, we also noticed that all the children are taught on the same level (i.e. mixed ability classes). In the Netherlands, especially in secondary school, there are different levels for children to learn at (i.e. students are streamed in all subjects in Secondary education). The level impacts the amount of lessons you have, the amount of years you spend at the school and the difficulty of the teaching material. This is a big difference to what we are used to in secondary school and is more similar to the Dutch primary schools. 
 
And maybe the biggest surprise to us, might be a silly one. We were really surprised to see that the children can get a warm lunch at the school. There were even different things to choose from. The lunches in the Netherlands are simple, cold and you bring them from home. The most common one is a slice of bread with some butter and cheese on it. It really felt like a special meal to us.  
 
We thank all the people for the great care we received at Westminster Academy. We had a great time! 

Staff Reflections: Developing Nuanced Arguments In KS3 History

By Corinna Matlis

In asking the question of how to help students develop complex, nuanced arguments in their key stage three writing, I have been considering two options:  that students need more support with structuring their writing or that students need more support with deepening their knowledge.  

In the past term, in two of my key stage three history classes, I did assessments that included robust scaffolding for writing.  In both of the assessments, the answers I received were clearly written, well-organised and showed knowledge of the topic. But they were not in general nuanced or complex arguments. Thus, it began to seem that writing scaffolds were very helpful to students (the student-voice Google quizzes that I did after the assessments confirmed this), but that they do not sort out the problem of needing to help students come up with and articulate complex arguments.  

In trying to plan for my next steps, I turned to the history teaching journal, Teaching HIstory, where I read an article by a teacher who had given her year 9 class a nearly identical assessment to the one I had given my class and had come up with nearly identical answers.  Her solution to the question of how to nuance her class' arguments was to deepen their knowledge with more time spent on knowledge acquisition and less time spent artificially moving through Bloom’s taxonomy in each lesson.  The more I read in Teaching History, the more it seemed clear that most history teachers find that depth of knowledge is the first step toward complex, nuanced arguments, and so I’ve set out to try to make this a reality.  

In the coming weeks and terms, I am aiming to focus on the story of what my students need to know, letting them develop greater depth of knowledge before asking them to make connections between different parts of that knowledge. In our Humanities department meeting, I mined my colleagues’ ideas about developing nuance.  Although for many of us developing the ability to write nuanced arguments is nearly ineffable – it’s something that you are just able to do at a certain point – we kept coming back to the idea that the more you know, the easier it becomes. 

With this in mind, I’m planning to softly rethink how I structure my lessons.  For instance, rather than moving quickly through information gathering onto questions of explaining links between different bits of information and then assessment of how those different parts compare, I might spend more of the lessons developing deep knowledge and save the assessment for the next lesson.  As an example, in a lesson about England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, I’m inclined to focus first on how it affected England and Elizabeth, then on how it affected Spain and Philip II, and then I will ask the students to explain how Elizabeth’s power at home and in the world  changed as a result of the defeat. In other words, the first two learning objectives would be descriptive, but they would prepare students for a much more complex attack on the third learning objective, when they need to explain, and perhaps even assess how far Elizabeth’s reign had changed over time.  

I’ll have to report back on how this goes, and in the meantime, if anyone reading has thoughts on how to deepen students’ knowledge and ability to make complex connections, please come talk to me!

Bitesize Research: Impact Of Pollution On Learning

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far - we’re so nearly at the end of term! Sustainability and climate change is an urgent priority for our world, and we know that this is being reflected in UK education policy - see here for the DfE document published in 2022. At WA, we’re looking to make sure we’re on the front foot with this, and we’ve collaborated with the IoE Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability since its inception, and we’re now part of their network of schools. Divisha has also published some great work on our blog around this theme - see here. 

As such, following a long standing and established correlation between pollution and poor health, I was interested to see the following article about how pollution may also impact learning as reported by TES. 

Objectives: To understand the possible impact of pollution on learning.

Summary: 

• There have been clear and established links between air pollution and physical health for a long time.

• One particular academic at the University of Warwick has been looking at the correlation between air pollution and student attendance. She notes that there is increasing evidence to point to a correlation between student absences and rising pollution levels.

• Another study from the US in 2020, found that after a ‘red air day’ (where ambient or outdoor air quality levels were deemed to be unhealthy) that school absences tended to double the next day.

• Other early indications from studies around the world tentatively suggest that air pollution impacts the working memory, behaviour, attention and academic outcomes of pupils of all ages.

• Further studies on exactly how air pollution particulates impact brain function are being proposed to see exactly what mechanisms are interrupted and therefore how we may best combat this. 

  
  

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I incorporating ideas about climate change, pollution and sustainability into my lessons and conversations with students?

• How could you spend time in finding out about students' living conditions and suggest actions they could to help their exposure, such as nurturing house plants? 

• What do I need to know to move forward with understanding this and incorporating this into my practice?

 

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Impact Of Sexual Violence On Mental Health

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Following on from our keynote training on T2 INSET day, I was really interested to see some research as reported by the the Institute of Education about the links between sexual violence and mental health. 

Objectives: To consider the impact of sexual violence on serious mental health issues in young people

Summary: 

• Serious mental health problems amongst 17 year olds could fall by as much as 16.8% for girls and 8.4% for boys if they had not experienced sexual violence

• Out of near 10,000 students involved in this study nearly 1,000 girls and 260 boys had experienced a sexual assault or an unwanted sexual approach

• The report noted that several serious mental health problems were considerably higher in those reporting sexual assaults or an unwanted sexual approach

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What is the role of education in this equation?

• How confident do I feel in being able to support students disclosing their experiences of sexual violence?

• What support would I like further on this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!