Curriculum development: why six ‘I’s are better than three!

Most middle and senior school leaders in England are well-versed in Ofsted’s three ‘I’s:

• Intent: how curriculum leadership “sets out the knowledge and skills that pupils will gain at each stage” (Ofsted, 2021)

• Implementation: “the way that the curriculum developed or adopted by the school is taught and assessed in order to support pupils to build their knowledge and to apply that knowledge as skills” (Ofsted, 2021)

• Impact: “the outcomes that pupils achieve as a result of the education they have received” (Ofsted, 2021)

In my work as an education consultant, I’ve supported schools with all three of these. At the level of intent, I like to draw on another three ‘I’s to signpost the importance of purpose to curriculum development. I first came across these in a paper by Morwenna Griffiths (2012), which outlined three purposes of education which support social justice.

Griffiths (2012) signposts the importance of an:

• Integral purpose: whereby learners enjoy education for its own sake, as an enjoyable process in its own right

• Inherent purpose: where learners are supported to become valuable members of society

• Instrumental purpose: where learners are supported on their journey to gaining fulfilling employment

I’ve worked with many educators who identify with one or more of these dimensions as key to their own educational ethos – they’re not new. However, I do think that they provide an interesting angle for curriculum development. We can intend for our learners to enjoy the curriculum, learn how to become good citizens as well as good students, and gain knowledge, skills, and qualifications that will support them in entering the workplace.

The instrumental dimension of curriculum design: ‘good results’

In most Western education systems, assessments are regularly conducted. Within Griffiths’ model, these are important because they offer young people the opportunity to gain employment in the future. We can argue about what types of qualification and employment are potentially ‘fulfilling’ for individual learners, but most of us recognize the importance of young people leaving school with some formal recognition of what they have learned during their compulsory education. If we were to neglect the instrumental dimension, then most of our young people would be disadvantaged upon entering the adult world, regardless of how much they had enjoyed learning (integral purpose) or become valuable members of society (inherent purpose).

The integral dimension of curriculum design: ‘good fun’

In the present climate, discussion of learners’ enjoyment of the curriculum is sometimes dismissed by those who see it as distraction from real learning. However, Griffiths (2012) roots this enjoyment in Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia:

“to live a good life, to have eudaimonia is to exercise virtues” (Griffiths, 2012, p. 663).

She also offers four “suggestions about where such joy is to be found” (p.665) in the curriculum:

• “Learning or teaching something that is both worthwhile and difficult – and likely not to be all fun.

• A pedagogical relationship: personal, intense and centred on students learning.

• Entrancement: learning or teaching students to engage with new intellectual possibilities.

• Becoming: experiencing or instigating unpredictable, personal transformations” (p.665, italics in original).

Griffiths (2012) argues that it is this integral (or eudaimonic) dimension of learning that has been marginalized in Western societies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, wedded as they are to the global education reform movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2015). However, many teachers implement Griffiths’ aspects of joy in their classrooms without this necessarily being captured at the stage of curriculum intent. We can also see that some of these integral aspects overlap with other purposes (e.g. "becoming" and the inherent dimension), providing interlinked benefits for young people in our schools. This is why I think we can seize on our autonomy over the curriculum, enshrining the integral alongside the instrumental.

The inherent dimension of curriculum design: the ‘good student’

I remember – in my earliest years as a secondary English teacher – being split off into faculties to report the aspects of social, moral, spiritual and cultural (SMSC) education that we touched on in the curriculum model for each subject. Our English department’s form was so lengthy that I’m doubtful any member of SLT read it from start-to-finish. Rather than working backwards like this in order to capture evidence for Ofsted, we can set out our inherent intent from the start. What does it mean to be a ‘good student’ in our school? What about in each subject? What about in our wider communities? How do these multiple ideas of ‘goodness’ overlap and intersect? How can we ensure that these ideas are inclusive - not tainted by unacknowledged prejudices or the narrowness of our own experiences?

I gave an example of extra paperwork in the previous paragraph, but I’m not advocating for that here. Instead, what I propose is a shared conversation about these inherent aspects of school life, which can then spearhead a real understanding of the ways in which curriculum planning and enactment can facilitate this inherent purpose, how our curriculum model can help to shape good human beings.

Why does it matter?

In order to illustrate the importance of this, I want to dwell for a moment on a pretty frightening example of what can happen when these three dimensions of curriculum are out of alignment. Imagine a school which pursues one aspect of instrumental achievement (e.g. SATS/GCSE results) at any cost. A school where learners and teachers openly cheat. A school where the process of learning is superficial, but the instrumental outcomes are high. What are these learners (and teachers, for that matter) learning about ‘goodness’ in this school? They’re learning that deceit is acceptable, or even positive – a skill to be honed in pursuit of extrinsic rewards. They’re learning that short cuts are better than hard work. They’re learning that effort and achievement are disconnected. Not all students will internalize this lesson. Some will reject it, based on the strength of their own moral compasses or those of their friends or family. These learners, who reject the inherent lessons of this school’s curriculum, will learn that the world isn’t fair, that effort is not necessarily rewarded, that ‘nice guys finish last.’ The cynical amongst us might argue that there’s no harm in learning this lesson, that at least these young people are being introduced to some of the less desirable features of the world in a safer space. I’m too much of an idealist to agree with them. The best schools I’ve worked in - and with - have been flourishing communities with firm values that shine through every aspect of school life, from the way that learners talk to one another at breaktime to the formal lessons they’re taught in school.

For me, these additional three ‘I’s provide a balanced, pragmatic foundation for curriculum development and design. Rather than identifying with one purpose as a driving force (for example, the instrumental pursuit of examination results for pupils), I try to balance all three when I am working with school leaders to set out our curriculum intent. We can then explore implementation and evaluation of impact across all three domains.

References

Griffiths, M. (2012) ‘Why joy in education is an issue for socially just policies’, Journal of Education Policy, 27(5), pp. 655–670. doi:10.1080/02680939.2012.710019.

Ofsted (2021) School inspection handbook, GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-inspection-handbook-eif/school-inspection-handbook (Accessed: 20 January 2022).

Sahlberg, P. (2016) ‘Finish Schools and the Global Education Reform Movement’, in Evers, J. and Kneyber, R. (eds) Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up. London, United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 162–174.