By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone has had a good week so far! This week, I was interested in this TES summary about the concept of ‘hinterland knowledge’ which was coined by History education specialist Counsell in 2018. Objectives: To understand the concept of ‘hinterland knowledge’ and how it informs teacher thinking and curriculum planning. Summary:
- Counsell states that ‘core’ and ‘hinterland’ knowledge are different insofar as the former is the fact-based knowledge you want students to remember over the long term (normally, what is listed on the specification at KS4 and KS5 is an example of core knowledge), and the latter is the important stories, anecdotes and illustrations that give meaning, richness and context to the core knowledge.
- Counsell argues that a consideration of this distinction between core and hinterland enables teachers to exercise judgement over the kinds of activities they choose in sequencing a curriculum
- The article gives an example from RS curriculum planning, explaining that consideration of the ‘hinterland knowledge’ gives depth and richness to the curriculum, but also enables it to stay focussed on retrieving core knowledge.
Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- What is my awareness of ‘hinterland knowledge’? How am I already using this?
- Am I aware of the other kinds of disciplinary knowledge in my subject? Some commonly used delineations of knowledge include substantive, conceptual, generative, declarative and procedural. What do I want to find about these?
Could it be suggested that the most effective way to embed core knowledge is through hinterland knowledge?
ReplyDeleteDo the students remember the stories (or case studies) first and foremost, then are able to retrieve the core concepts from them, or is it the other way around?
Another very interesting post, Jaya, thank you. A challenge for all curriculum designers is to find the best balance between acquiring and remembering core knowledge, and knowing what do with it (application and communication). I was not familiar with the concept of "hinterland knowledge" which seems like a natural bridge between those two distinct goals. Thanks for sharing!
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