Education Scotland is leading a systematic review of the Scottish curriculum called the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, to ensure it remains up to date and relevant for children and young people. This week we’re focusing on the importance of learning for sustainability. In our latest guest blog David Dick, Peripatetic Nursery Teacher, South Lanarkshire, shares his reflections.
Picture the scene. A small group of nursery children and a practitioner, hunched round a wooden table, preparing oranges for their friends at snack-time. A child, Harry, holds up an orange seed, and asks “what’s this?” In this moment, we have the perfect conditions for learning – a concrete, meaningful experience, a child’s curiosity about the world, a genuine question, and a responsive adult who can see the child, hear the child and capitalise on a golden opportunity to open and expand the child’s thinking. The experienced and responsive practitioner knows the best initial answer is, “well… what do you think it could be?”
A child is a seed: each child, a kernel of untapped, unlimited potential. Seeds and children need particular conditions to grow – they need care, they need attention, they need to be nurtured to ensure their potential to thrive is fully realised.
In Scotland, our ELC settings and schools are the eco-systems in which we encourage our learners to grow. Eco-systems themselves grow – they adapt and change with time, and this is reflected in the upcoming changes to our curriculum.
We live in a time of accelerated flux and instability. The natural world, the biosphere in which the human and all other species live, is no longer in balance. Climate breakdown is now an international, planet-wide crisis. Across our material, emotional and empathetic realities, technology amplifies, distorts and distresses. Our political systems are fragmenting, mutating, degenerating, and previously held pillars of progressive values such as democracy, human rights and equality are in danger of crumbling.
That flux, disorder and precarity, filters down into the soil of the eco-system for our children and young people. Their growing conditions are changing – but their needs have not. How can we sustain and improve an eco-system of care and learning for our children and young people in our schools and settings? How can we ensure that teaching and learning is relevant, coherent and meaningful in a 21st century context? How can we develop key skills in critical thinking, investigation and agency? How can we ensure that learner voice is a foundational element, not just of curriculum design, but also of curriculum delivery, at the coalface, in the classroom? How can we support learners to navigate the choppy waters of the global and local challenges that face us in our communities? How can we improve the curriculum’s ability to vanquish once and for all, the deleterious effect of poverty upon a learner’s potential?
The Curriculum Improvement Cycle is seeking to answer these questions. With a renewed focus on content, knowledge production and topical, urgent educational arenas such as political literacy and learning for sustainability, the CIC is aiming to modernise and deliver a 21st Century Curriculum that foregrounds equity, engagement and exploration. The introduction of these contemporary elements should be celebrated, and their inclusion in the new curriculum is grounded with excellent intentions and transformative potential.
However, this is not also without its challenges. Adding extra in, means taking something out – our curriculum is already full to bursting. Key decisions need to be made about what is most useful for our learners, and curriculum leaders need to be cognisant of the methods by which new content and approaches will be delivered. Significant investment will be required as teachers, schools and settings will need training and time to adapt their curricula. This will be of paramount importance, especially in the current economic situation which is incredibly tight and stressful, with funding and teacher numbers being pared to the bone and austerity-driven socio-economic factors impacting upon learners progress. It is essential that any changes to the curriculum are funded properly, if teachers are to develop the confidence and proficiency in which to deliver it effectively.
At every level of our education system, from ELC practitioners, teachers, support assistants, school leaders, managers, local authorities and Scottish Government, we are collectively committed to creating and improving the growing conditions for our learners. In this co-dependent, fundamentally people-centred eco-system, there is no question that we are all deeply rooted in the preservation of that rich human soil for growth; the appropriate care, attention, understanding and compassion, all vigorously augmented by professional advocacy for the highest-quality teaching, to ensure our young people are able to safely live in the world with meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging. The Curriculum Improvement Cycle presents a generational opportunity to get it right for all learners, but it requires involved stakeholders to take that project seriously, engage critically with the tasks in hand, and ensure that any new curriculum directions are practical and purposeful.
A better world is always possible. When we think about how best to proceed with that intention, let’s return to the example of the Harry and his orange seed. Perhaps the key aspect to both the curriculum improvement cycle and to the crucial question of how our world and communities can be profoundly and compassionately reconfigured, is to centralise our learners’ agency by asking them attentively and purposefully: “well…. what do you think it could be?”
If you are keen to hear and learn more about the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) you might be interested to listen to the Education Scotland Learning Conversations Podcast with Education Scotland Chief Executive, Gillian Hamilton, and Ollie Bray, Strategic Director, 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 eNewsletter.
