The Curriculum Improvement Cycle is a systematic review of the Scottish curriculum to ensure it remains up to date and relevant for children and young people.
In the first of a series of articles focusing on literacy and English, Helen Fairlie, Senior Education Officer at Education Scotland, shares her reflections on the journey so far
Words matter. An obvious statement to make – one that has meant a lot to me throughout my career as an English teacher and in my current role at Education Scotland. However, as the Curriculum Improvement Cycle has built over the course of the last twelve months, it is one that I reflect upon in a better light.
What is it about words that matters most in Scottish education? What is it about words, sentences, stories and the myriad other texts that children encounter and create, not only in school but in their everyday lives that matters as we evolve our technical framework for CfE?
Words communicate and shape our thoughts, support us to understand our feelings and build our empathy, connecting us to those around us. Knowing and using many words is good. From the beginning of primary school, learning to read and write can be likened to cracking ‘the code’. Learning to decode and comprehend words in order to be able to read for ourselves is essential. Encoding, or writing down the right words in the right order, according to the right rules is a means of communication that we hone and use to express our ideas in ways that can be formal, entertaining and inventive. Indeed, it feels fair to say reading and writing are central to the curriculum, both as a foundation for learning and the means through which we learn.
At the outset of the CIC we asked practitioners and stakeholders to reflect upon and identify the knowledge skills and attributes within literacy and English as a curricular area that support learners in their development of the four capacities. Concerns about reading and writing definitely played out across responses to these questions. However, it was interesting to note how the other aspects of literacy bubble to the surface when we consider what we need from the literacy and English curriculum to be ‘confident’, ‘responsible’, ‘effective’ and ‘successful’. Talk and oracy, for example were a common focus – how we present formally in talk, but importantly the skills and knowledge we can acquire in order to interact, discuss, debate and collaborate effectively through listening and talking.
Of course, we know that speech and language and ‘talk’ is essential not only to early literacy but throughout our continuing literacy development. ‘Critical literacy’ was also mentioned frequently, often in the same breath as concerns about mis-information and dis-information. Responses like this speak to the idea of our literacy as a route to empowerment, being able to communicate our views in effective ways and being equipped to challenge the texts that we are presented with, in and out of school.
Literacy learning is powerful but it is also personal. How literacy develops is very much linked to children’s own life experiences, and to their learning needs. Yes, we need to learn ‘the code’, how to decipher it and in turn how to use it to express what we want to communicate, both through our speech and through our command of its squiggles and lines (whether that’s with a pencil or by finding the letters on a keyboard).
Yet we come to school equipped with our own codes, the language of home and community and we’re already using these to communicate and connect with each other about what we know and what we’re interested in. On top of that, my relationship with the code is influenced by my own specific learning needs, for example if I am a neurodivergent learner the toolkit that I use to access and use written language will be very unique to my own needs.
And, in fact, we know the language that children and young people absorb and use in today’s world amounts to so much more than words on a page. Technology and digital texts are so central to all of our everyday lives now, not just those of young people. Words, sentence and paragraphs are obviously integral to the texts that we access through digital devices, but these texts are so much more. They’re multi-modal, integrating images, reels, hyperlinks… We read, watch and listen simultaneously and we are immersed – and sometimes hooked – on the content that we consume.
A common assumption that we might make is that children are the ‘digital natives’; and that it’s over to them to teach us about how these texts work. However, while the types of text multiply, the core purpose of literacy learning stays the same: as educators it is our role to support children to make meaning from such texts; understand what is meaningful about them, and how they can impact their lives.
The Education Scotland team have also sought to identify what practitioners see as the challenges within the current curriculum for literacy and English. Many themes emerge from these conversations but three stand out consistently:
- First that the curriculum is seen as too ‘traditional’ and not forward-thinking enough.
- Second, there’s a lack of a clear, shared understanding of progression in literacy and English, causing difficulties at transition points.
- And third, it is felt that accountability measures are narrowing the curriculum— prioritising easily measured outcomes while side-lining equally vital but less quantifiable aspects of learning.
For me, the task of evolving the technical framework for CfE, in order to offer better clarity on the position of knowledge is a huge opportunity to improve children’s outcomes in literacy and English, and a route to tackling the challenges outlined above.
Education Scotland’s recent discussion paper sets out more detail on how we can develop a ‘know-do-understand’ model. Developing a set of ‘Big Ideas’ will enable us not only to offer clarity on what matters within literacy and English but also allows us to give equity of esteem to the different components that combine to support all children to be literate – not only those that can be easily quantified and measured.
In the autumn of last year, Education Scotland commenced work alongside their ‘core group’ for literacy and English. As is the case for each curriculum area, this group of educators take on the role of co-design partners for the Curriculum Improvement Cycle. The final outcome of this piece of work will be an evolved technical framework, for literacy and English. As outlined in the recent discussion paper, this will be built around an ‘understand-know-do’ model, with a set of ‘Big Ideas’ at its heart.
November saw the group of fifteen educators first come together for an intensive four-day workshop. The initial task of the group has been to take a closer look at the full range of current challenges within the curricular area, as outlined by the profession and other key stakeholders. For this co-design group, working towards workable solutions involves both an inward and an outward look.
Looking inward, each group member brings something unique to the table. ELC, primary and secondary sectors are equally represented, along with a range of roles – classroom teachers, middle and senior school leaders and local authority leads. Cross-sectoral conversations are highly valued by group members and they strengthen the group’s consensus that the end product – the evolved technical framework – will have the greatest impact on children’s learning, if it works equally well for all practitioners at all stages of the 3-18 journey.
Looking outwards has involved a few different components, first growing the group’s awareness of research in literacy and English. A combination of a curated research reading list, ‘deep dive’ workshop activities and informal talks from academics have supported core group members to engage with research.
Professor Sarah McGeown (University of Edinburgh) joined our most recent workshop to talk to us about her perspective on diverse disciplinary perspectives on literacy, within research. Professor McGeown broadened our awareness of the range of disciplinary perspectives supporting us to understand that ‘diverse disciplines conceptualise literacy in different ways…what literacy is, and the pedagogies and provisions needed to support it.’
A more focussed deep dive through the socio-cultural lens took place in November when Dr Navan Govender (University of Strathclyde) joined us to share his research and expertise, specifically within the area of Critical Literacy – a term that has circulated within CfE documentation for literacy for the last twelve years, yet is not always fully understood – neither in its meaning or in its potential for enhancing children’s experiences in the curriculum.
We have also looked outward to other countries and jurisdictions in which different versions of the ‘Big Ideas’ model have been implemented, supporting our understanding of how the understand-know-do model could work in Scotland, and noting how curricular guidance is presented in order to support effective implementation.
A great deal of hard thinking has been done in relation to how we evolve the technical framework for literacy and English and it is still early days! Our core group workshop members are passionate and dedicated practitioners and have embraced each opportunity enthusiastically. As have the many practitioners and teachers we have engaged during the build-up to the CIC over the last 12 months.
The next milestone for the Core Group is to take their ideas for change out to the wider Collaboration Group of around 100 practitioners, who are waiting in the wings and will be joining us for our event in May. We look forward to continuing bringing the profession on board to co-design a framework that brings a new focus to literacy and English for the years to come.
If you are keen to hear and learn more about the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) you might be interested to listen to the latest Education Scotland Learning Conversations Podcast with Education Scotland Chief Executive, Gillian Hamilton, and Education Scotland Strategic Director, Ollie Bray, on the CIC or read this recent article from TESS Scotland – CfE review: ‘Evolving Curriculum for Excellence, not ripping it up.’ You can also visit the CIC Web Portal/ Glow Blog and from here sign up for the termly CIC News Bulletin and read the latest issue here
