Since spring 2021, Ofsted has been publishing research reviews into different subjects. These research reviews draw upon writing on curriculum and pedagogy from within subject communities and input from teachers in the classroom.
It’s been refreshing to see the differences between subjects acknowledged and explored. For example, the research review in history focuses on the use of substantive concepts, something highly relevant to this discipline but of less utility elsewhere. The science review, meanwhile, discusses the role of scientific enquiry as distinct from enquiry-based approaches to learning, as well as the implications of this for practical work.
One common thread running through these different reviews is the role that different forms of knowledge play in the curriculum. When reading the research review for geography, my own subject, I was particularly struck by the emphasis given to disciplinary knowledge. This is the knowledge of how our subject creates and contests knowledge over time. How to think in a geographical way about the world. There can sometimes be accusations that geography is becoming little more than the memorisation of facts that students are expected to regurgitate, so it is good to see official bodies recognising that our subject is so much more than that.
All this does present a challenge, though. How do we make time to ensure that we are building an understanding of scientific enquiry, historical substantive concepts or geographical disciplinary thinking through our curriculum? Do we need to reconsider the importance that we place on the teaching of substantive knowledge?
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To answer that question, I have found it useful to consider the part different forms of knowledge play in each topic that we cover, as well as how they link together over time to develop that disciplinary thinking.
How to develop disciplinary knowledge
Firstly, I consider the substantive knowledge I want to teach within that topic. The national curriculum for geography is very vague on this. It insists we teach “rivers” at key stage 2 and it occurs again in key stage 3 through “hydrology”, again in GCSE specifications and once more at A level, at least through looking at water in earth systems. However, very little, if any, detail is given on what we should teach about rivers. We may decide that students should know about the formation of meanders, but when, if ever, do we talk about helicoidal flows and thalwegs? This is something that each curriculum creator is left to decide using their expertise in children’s education development and subject expertise.
Once I have the substantive knowledge, I consider the tacit knowledge and everyday knowledge that students bring with them. Tacit knowledge describes things we know but would have trouble expressing. For example, people might have a sense that mountains affect rainfall but might struggle to explain the nature of relief rainfall. Everyday knowledge describes those things people pick up from their day-to-day lives, things that don’t need to be taught in school. They might know something about their local river and where it floods and how the local housing development increased this risk. It is useful to identify this knowledge firstly because it gives us a starting point to build on, but secondly because it is with this kind of knowledge that misconceptions are found. For example, people might have a tacit sense that a river must run more quickly in its upper course because it is flowing downhill, but this is usually not the case.
Next, I can consider the procedural knowledge that I want to include. This is the knowledge of how to do things, like read an OS map or display data on a compound line graph. I have found it is useful to identify this propositional knowledge because I can then think about where it fits in my curriculum both in terms of the sequence, so that they can do more complex things once the basics have been grasped, but also so that the same procedural knowledge is revisited and they have time to practise it to fluency. In this way propositional knowledge becomes a skill.
Once students have substantive and procedural knowledge, built on their tacit and everyday knowledge, they can think about this knowledge. They can consider how we know what we do about rivers and why our knowledge about them changes over time. They can consider how what they know changes the way they see the world and they can ask questions to explore this knowledge further. Disciplinary knowledge doesn’t happen instead of substantive knowledge but because of it, and I find that exciting.
Mark Enser is head of geography at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex. He is the author of Powerful Geography: Curriculum with purpose in practice and he tweets @EnserMark
