I was listening to Carl Hendrick being interviewed on the Thought Stretchers podcast. The main thrust of the organisation behind the podcast is enquiry-based learning. Hendrick was being interviewed about the clash – real or perceived – between enquiry-based learning and the science of learning1. Patiently and articulately he pointed out that it isn’t a dichotomy between enquiry and direct instruction, but that there were many pitfalls to enquiry-based approaches which do go against what cognitive science tells us. I thought Hendrick hit the jackpot (albeit I’m conscious of affirmation bias) when he said that our job as educators was surely to introduce students to brave new worlds and he questioned whether that could happen if students purely pursued their own interests: they don’t know what they don’t know and by only pursuing what they have some exposure to, then they never will know. I think this might be an example of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns.
Enquiry-based learning and direction instruction get unfairly caricatured as extreme cartoon versions of themselves. Plus, as Carl said, it isn’t a dichotomy. If we want to find a way between the unhelpful extremes, I think we have to come to questions of knowledge:
- Do we actually think students need to learn knowledge and that schools have a key role in teaching this knowledge?
- If we want students to learn knowledge, what will that knowledge be?
If we turn back to that quote of Carl Hendrick’s – we want to introduce students to brave new worlds. This is no better articulated than through the work of Michael Young and others around the concept of powerful knowledge. The foundation of this approach is the belief that one of the roles of schools is to take students beyond their experience and introduce them to knowledge which they otherwise would not be able to access. So that would emphatically answer the first question. In terms of the second question, it is up to educators to decide upon the most valuable knowledge which students should know.
In answering ‘what knowledge’, Young acknowledges his own changing views over time. As a sociologist of education since the 1970s, Young was previously a social constructivist. He believed that the school curriculum reflected the inequalities of societal structures: what he labelled ‘the knowledge of the powerful’. Following that line of argument, schools were acting to replicate the inequalities by creating an un-level playing field for students. After decades of advocating this view, Young recognised its shortcomings.
Young realised that knowledge has a social importance. He realised that his previous stance had led to many educational reforms which, deliberately or not, left many students struggling to access socially valuable knowledge which would allow more equitable and meritocratic access to higher education pathways, the professions and the broader benefits of knowledge. Young realised that to deliver social justice would actually require all students to access knowledge equally. So instead of downplaying knowledge in schools, as had happened with successive iterations of the English National Curriculum which had shredded knowledge content in favour of knowledge-free skills and competencies, Young set out his concept of powerful knowledge which influenced policy reforms, coming to be called a knowledge-rich curriculum2.
Questions around knowledge in education quickly become politicised. In the UK, the previous Conservative government introduced a number of reforms which advanced the knowledge-rich curriculum. A new National Curriculum alongside new exam specifications, all of which became more content heavy. England’s standards inspectorate, Ofsted, made a significant pivot to evaluating the curriculum as the basis for their inspections. Taken together, these reforms saw schools scrambling to update their curricula. While the motivating factors for these changes may have been unfortunate, I don’t think I am the only educator who saw the value of the curriculum work which happened as a result. While not working in the UK anymore, I do worry whether some of this positive curriculum work may be lost amidst any reforms of the new Labour government. Even if the new government doesn’t expressly devalue the curriculum changes, we have already seen Ofsted dropping their curriculum focus and I reckon that just losing the emphasis will be enough to see schools shifting priorities as they scramble to second-guess and go after whatever the next big thing appears to be in a world of continuing high-stakes inspections3.
Even when the idea of the knowledge-rich curriculum was at its peak, it was never universally accepted. Whether in the UK or here in the USA where I now teach, there are many advocates for skills or competency based curricula. Sometimes, this might be because the selection of knowledge is just too politically sensitive. In the US, education and the curriculum is incredibly fragmented and this probably creates more politicisation. In the face of such difficulty, maybe it is easier to understand why educators focus on pedagogy as the main means of improving what are generally poor educational standards.
My main problem with advocates of ’21st century skills’ or similar is that nobody will acknowledge that is is simply not possible to develop skills, competencies or capabilities in a knowledge-free vacuum. They either ignore the fact or, perhaps worse, explicitly say that the knowledge is genuinely unimportant. Isaac Newton is often attributed with the phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ – a recognition that he was only able to make scientific discoveries because he was building on all of the knowledge created by his predecessors. Much of creativity is combinatorial; critical thinking only works if people have something to think critically about. Maybe though, children can choose to collect their own knowledge.
Twenty years ago the Internet fuelled this line of argument and now people are wielding the same point but ‘the Internet’ has simply been switched for ‘ChatGPT’ (other AI large-language models are available, although you could be forgiven for thinking that, given how successful ChatGPT has been at capturing attention). ‘You don’t need to know anything anymore, you can just Google it’.
Ok, let’s pursue that ‘just Google it’ argument a little further. Students could identify their own interests and then, with some skill development, simply research those interests. Then they can be creative or critical (or any other skill or capability) about that knowledge, right? Well, yes, they could, but to what end? It might help them develop some skills, but expertise and the agency and opportunities which come with expertise is developed through a combination of knowledge and application. By the time a medical doctor qualifies, they’ve been studying science in one way or another for well over a decade. Each year of that science learning has built on what has gone before and become ever more sophisticated. Now maybe those future doctors could have pursued an enquiry-based approach pursuing their own interests, but then how would they have acquired the correct knowledge? The same problem exists for any profession or discipline. You could become an expert independently, but that is so inefficient and unlikely that it makes no sense. That is where a curriculum comes in, where knowledge comes in and in a knowledge-based curriculum it makes sense for the pedagogical approach to maximise the efficiency of acquiring and applying that knowledge, which will also allow for the development of skills, capabilities and competencies.
Call it direct instruction or explicit instruction, or just more broadly say you’re being informed by cognitive science. We may not know everything about how young people learn, but we know enough to say that enquiry-based learning or discovery-based learning are less effective. The use of effectiveness there is not just about preparing for exam success, it is about the accumulation and application of knowledge. It is not purpose-specific. Also, to go back to Carl Hendrick’s point from the beginning of this essay, it isn’t an either/or. As students build their expertise, there will be more opportunity for enquiry or discovery – because they will have developed the skills and prior knowledge to make those approaches more effective4.
Knowledge is important and cognitive science-based teaching is more effective. Experts who are able to function independently rely on the former – their body of working knowledge – and are typically trained through the latter5. I genuinely worry that these views are not universally accepted. Moreover, I worry that strides towards these views becoming more widely held could possibly go into reverse in the UK. There are plenty of problems with the education system – in the UK, the USA and elsewhere – and I would advocate that a greater focus on knowledge-rich curricula, established through as politically-free a process as possible, delivered through pedagogy informed by cognitive science would be the basis of solving many of those education system problems.
Author’s note
The ideas in this essay have been swirling around my head for some time. I’ve touched on many of them before in previous posts. I’ve probably spent more time reflecting on this piece than usual, which says more about my writing approach than anything else. I know it could be further refined and I may return to the post to tweak it. I’ve mentioned many inspirations through the essay but many more have gone unmentioned. I’ve been engaging with curriculum research since my PGCE and I am immensely grateful for every article, book, tweet, talk and video which has informed by thinking.
Notes
1Listening to Adam Boxer on the Education Research Reading Room podcast, Boxer humorously said that in most classrooms you wouldn’t be able to tell which educational approach the teacher was adopting as they’d just be clicking through a slide deck. Admittedly, Boxer was making this point in service of a wider argument against slides as the main delivery mechanism for the classroom.
2I appreciate that Michael Young and powerful knowledge was not the only influence behind the curriculum reforms which collectively led to the knowledge rich curriculum. Even more influential than Young was the American ED Hirsch with his concept of core knowledge. Although superficially there may appear to be many similarities between powerful knowledge and core knowledge, they come from different ideological and intellectual spaces. Young himself acknowledges these differences. Powerful knowledge acknowledges that knowledge is dynamic and a is a product of social processes which give the knowledge it’s value (i.e. it is generated by disciplinary and institutional methods which makes people respect it). Powerful knowledge acknowledges that knowledge is valuable but also open to challenge.
3As I was drafting this essay, I saw the news break that Ofsted is dropping one-word inspections. While this is undoubtedly a positive step, I am not sure it necessarily reduces the stakes of inspection. In the place of a single word or phrase, parents will recalibrate what they’re looking for in Ofsted reports and schools will chase fragments or buzzwords which indicate educational quality. Sadly, this will make the divide between skilled and unskilled choosers all the more apparent, which will do little for equity across society.
4Related to this is the distinction between independence and independent learning. Independent learning is at best inefficient and at worst a complete fallacy. The aim should be students being independent, but they don’t have to learn independently to achieve that. Rather, they should be guided from teacher instruction through scaffolded guided practice towards independent practice, and ultimately to independence.
5I doubt many medical school courses start with students being presented with a critically-ill patient and an open-ended task to cure said patient. That is the scenario medical students are being trained towards, once they have the knowledge and skills – the expertise – to confront the challenge.
Commonplace 