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To understand what we mean by knowledge-rich, I find it easiest to start from the other end of the spectrum. What is a knowledge-poor curriculum? Unfortunately this is quite familiar to me, because it is what I have seen far too much of over the years. People sometimes point out that knowledge has always been taught, which is true, of course, but for most of my career the content of the curriculum received very little attention from school leaders. What was taught was treated mostly as a vehicle to achieve things like engaging students, helping them to develop transferable skills and demonstrating progress against level descriptors or target grades. One bit of content was considered as good as another for these purposes, so as a History teacher a unit of study on the French Revolution could be swapped for one on the Renaissance without too much reflection.

The best way of breaking it down straightforwardly that I have found comes from Tom Sherrington (2018) in an article in the fourth edition of the Impact journal, which I would strongly recommend. Sherrington lists four features of a knowledge-rich curriculum (see slide above), none of which have received the attention they deserve from Ofsted or school leaders for much of my career. When leading inset in my school I have condensed it even further, arguing that a knowledge-rich curriculum is one in which knowledge is thoughtfully selected, intelligently sequenced and carefully secured. I have found this to be a helpful and practical framework, allowing different departments to work on the issues most pertinent to their subjects.

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Young would argue that, while it is always open to revision, powerful knowledge has more value than other knowledge because of what it can do for the knower, not because rich people have it. The slide (above) shows the qualities which he ascribes to powerful knowledge, all of which make it more reliable and enable those who have it to make connections, explain causes and predict consequences. Young is very clear that powerful knowledge is distinct from everyday knowledge and argues that it is especially important for schools to offer it to students who are less likely to access it at home.

In his focus on the entitlement of disadvantaged students, Young has a similar social justice emphasis to Hirsch, but there are also important differences between them. Whereas Hirsch looks to literate culture, Young looks to the academic disciplines on which school subjects draw. Young argues that the job of curriculum thinkers is to recontextualise these disciplines for children, inducting them into the academic world. This creates a tension between the two thinkers, which I will explore a little more in the next post. What is clear is that much curricular discourse in and around schools can be traced back to Hirsch or Young, whether or not people are aware of it.

Another distinction is between substantive and disciplinary knowledge. A key thinker here is Christine Counsell, who wrote a superb Impact article on this (2018a). Substantive knowledge tends to be used to cover the things which are claimed as being true, and in some cases disputed, within each discipline. It is what we instinctively tend to think of as knowledge about geography, science or whatever. Examples from history would be dates like the Battle of Hastings in 1066, concepts like parliament, periods like the Middle Ages and claims like the assertion that World War One changed British society.

Hinterland, by contrast, is the rich backdrop which students would get from reading the full novel. They will not remember every detail of it, but the core makes no sense without it, so core and hinterland go hand in hand. Trying to teach students core knowledge without hinterland would be like just giving out the knowledge organiser without bothering to read the novel.

What I would stress about any process of change is that you must think hard about the active ingredients of what you want to do, rather than surface features, which can be shiny and distracting. An example of a surface feature might be knowledge organisers. I think they can be a helpful tool and have used them myself, but you will not have a knowledge-rich curriculum just because you have knowledge organisers everywhere. If you want to use them, you need to be clear about what they are for and how they will be used. Their value probably also varies significantly from subject to subject, so it would be something to discuss with each head of department rather than simply instructing them all to produce them thoughtlessly. You need to start by thinking carefully about what change you want and what actions will help to bring it about, rather than just opting for something because it is concrete and highly visible.

Critical thinking is a rich concept that has been developing throughout the past 2,500 years. The term "critical thinking" has its roots in the mid-late 20th century. Below, we offer overlapping definitions which together form a substantive and trans-disciplinary conception of critical thinking.

Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.

A Definition

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem - in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and

imposing intellectual standards upon them.

They are always willing to put in before they take out. They do not believe in easy money or something for nothing. Rich people believe that you have to justly earn and pay for, in terms of toil and treasure, any rewards and riches that you desire.

Poor people lack this fundamental understanding, the direct relationship between what you put in and what you get out. They are always seeking to get something for nothing or for as little as possible. They want success without achievement, riches without labor, money without effort, and fame without talent.

Poor people gamble, buy lottery tickets, come to work at the last possible moment, waste time while they are there, and then leave work at the first possible minute. They line up by the hundreds and thousands to audition for programs like American Idol, thinking that they can become rich and famous without ever having paid the price necessary to develop the level of talent and ability that enables them to rise above their competitors.

If the pace of global change is such that core corporate identity is ephemeral (along with its structure and products), how can we measure longevity? Yet even if the organisation dies, all the systems, sub-systems and individuals (Churchman, 1968) that sustained it so long and so evidently successfully (i.e., its culture, leader selection, product quality) may somehow still exist, even if the parts have absorbed or emerged into new realities. If we could explain this metamorphosis more clearly, and help stakeholders prosper in the process, we would be rich!

In actuality, however, both the original Simon-Ehrlich bet and the rematch show that bets are a great way to make people tone down hyperbolic rhetoric. In a bet-free climate, Ehrlich felt free to loudly predict mass starvation. In a bet-rich climate, he had to settle for predicting things like rising inequality. The horror!

Quantitative writing (QW) promotes quantitative literacy as well as writing proficiency. QW assignments link "writing-across-the-curriculum" with "mathematics-across-the-curriculum". At the heart of both movements is the importance of critical thinking. A good QW assignment engages students with an open-ended, ambiguous, data-rich problem requiring the thinker to understand principles and concepts rather than simply to apply formulae. Assignments ask students to produce a claim with supporting reasons and evidence rather than a reductive "right answer." By asking students to find meaning in data and to use numbers in argument, QW assignments promote growth in critical thinking and real world problem-solving.

PHIL 275 - Black American Thinkers

Credits: 4

An examination of selected works from the rich and complex tapestry of black American thought from David Walker (1830) to the present. Authors articulate conceptions of blackness, justice, and fair political order that stand in contrast to current conditions in the United States as well as recommending methods for resisting these conditions. Reponses to, and examination of, slavery and/or subsequent efforts to marginalize and control black women, men and youth are the primary focus of the course. 2351a5e196