Insular v Hybrid models of a 21st Century Curriculum
the rules of classic art teach us by their arbitrary nature that the thoughts arising from our daily needs, sentiments and experiences are only a small part of the thoughts of which we are capable
(Valery)
A good friend recently drew my attention to the Gresham College web site. Located in the City of London, the College is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, son of Sir Richard Gresham who was Lord Mayor in 1537/38 and who conceived the idea of building an Exchange modelled on the Antwerp Bourse. For over 400 years guest Professors have given free public lectures on a wide range of topics covering culture, the arts, science, religion and politics. The text of many of these lectures is available online, free to view, and often accompanied by streaming audio or video. Scrolling through the archives, I came across a talk by Professor Michael Young, entitled “Does Britain’s education system need to go into a new gear?”.
Young asserts that the over-riding purpose of schools,
they enable young people (and adults) to acquire knowledge not available to them in their homes, at work or in the communities in which they live.
Curricular Knowledge v Everyday Knowledge
Young asks to what extent the knowledge on which the curriculum is based should differ from our everyday knowledge. He reflects that criticisms of a subject – based curriculum have gained a new and wider credibility in the last decade, with a growing tension between the openness to innovation of advanced economies and the persistence of relatively rigid divisions between the different school subjects and between curriculum knowledge in general and the everyday knowledge that people use in their adult lives. On the other hand, we should remember that a curriculum based on the separation of subjects from each other and on the clear separation of the curriculum from everyday knowledge has been an almost universal feature of education systems and has been has been associated with the massive expansion of knowledge and economic growth of the last two centuries. He argues that those of us who gained our own education through such a curriculum, must think hard before rejecting it for the next generation of young people.
Insularity
Insularity emphasises the differences rather than the continuity between types of knowledge. Such differences relate to how people learn and how they produce new knowledge. Therefore there will be, it is argued, a pedagogic price to pay for dispensing with such boundaries. It is based on a view that knowledge cannot be equated solely with social needs or interests at a particular time.
Hybridity
“Hybridity” rejects the claim that subject/discipline boundaries reflect features of knowledge itself and sees them as a product of particular historical circumstances and interests. It stresses the “essential unity and continuity of all forms and kinds of knowledge (theoretical and everyday)… (and) the permeability of all classificatory boundaries. A curriculum based on the principle of hybridity provides a way of overcoming the traditional boundedness of school or academic knowledge and hence can make schools more relevant to the real world at the same time, by being more inclusive and adaptable, promote the goals of equality and social justice.
In other words, the insular, academic curriculum is set against social and economic arguments for a more ‘responsive’ curriculum that can be the basis for new kinds of skills and knowledge that transcend current disciplinary boundaries and academic/vocational divisions.
The outcome of the tension between insular and hybrid models seems currently to point in two directions.
One is towards the progressive disappearance and replacement of the disciplinary curriculum. The other is the emergence of new divisions between elite institutions (both schools and universities) which are likely to continue to maintain discipline-based curricula and mass institutions under pressure to develop curricula geared to more immediate economic and political demands.
Young poses a number of questions:
Should priority be given to the differentiation of knowledge, especially the differences between theoretical and everyday knowledge? (ie Geography is a different kind of knowledge from Leisure and Tourism)
Or, should priority be given to the unity of knowledge? (If the answer is yes, there is a good case for the combination of practical and theoretical knowledge that is found in a field like Leisure & Tourism being just as acceptable as geography or history.)
The Case for Subjects and Disciplines
Academic disciplines arose from a set of codes and practices that set, eg, geography history and the sciences apart from the practical knowledge people had developed in all societies in the course of their everyday and working lives.
These rules and codes were explicitly associated with educational institutions which were removed from the demands of either family, working or political life. This separation of the curriculum from everyday knowledge gave the knowledge acquired through the school and university curriculum an objectivity and explanatory power that was not a feature of knowledge tied to practical concerns and the exigencies of everyday life. We should be cautious about blurring disciplinary and subject boundaries and replacing knowledge based on specialist research and pedagogic communities with knowledge based on immediate practical concerns of employers.
Young believes that Reforms that replace knowledge based on the codes and practices of specialist subjects and disciplines with the practical knowledge of different occupational sectors are in danger of emphasising procedures which focus on ‘how to do things’ instead of on explanations concerned with ‘why things are as they are’ . Addressing ‘why questions’ depends, as in the case of fields such as engineering, architecture, medicine and accountancy- on knowledge shared by specialist teachers, university researchers and professional associations. He believes that not to rely on such forms of organisation- is to seek a short cut to increasing participation which can only perpetuate inequalities.
Critics of the curriculum of the past emphasise its lack of fit with the global economic context; they interpret knowledge and learning needs from the statements made by employer organisations who call for a more flexible skill – based curriculum However they invaraiably fail to the importance of establishing the new forms of association and trust that will be needed if the new types of knowledge that they call for are to fullfill the claims made for them.
The result of the unresolved tension between the two curriculum models is a kind of ad hoc and pragmatic modification of the curriculum of the past; the ‘new’ curriculum is still underpinned, at least in part, by the traditional social networks of subject specialists. Two questions remain. First, what pedagogies need to be developed that will extend access to theoretical knowledge beyond the 50% who currently gain 5 or more GCSEs at gradess A-C? Second, how is the curriculum to be broadened and the new networks of specialists that underpin them be established to take account of global economic changes without losing the crucial independence that the was given by the old subjects?
