ERIC Number: EJ926508
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0963-8253
EISSN: N/A
Curricula for the Common School: What Shall We Tell Our Children?
Booth, Tony
FORUM: for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education, v53 n1 p31-47 2011
This article gives an account of the way an opportunity has been taken to draw together ideas for a curriculum for the common school and beyond, during the writing of a new edition of the "Index for Inclusion; developing learning and participation in schools" (Booth & Ainscow, 2011). I discuss the way thinking about the curriculum for the common school was curtailed in the mid 1980s and has re-emerged for me following further elaboration of a values framework and a consideration of its implications for educational action. It has been prompted too by facing up to imperatives ignored in the past and clamouring for attention in the present. I consider the nature of a curriculum that builds from experience, is values and rights-based, is local and global, engages with sustainability and roots us in the past, present and future. This involves a radical re-structuring for adults and children of the knowledge and skills which frame learning activities inside and outside classrooms. I give a brief indication of how I have fleshed out curriculum areas, and how I hope for these efforts to be refined in negotiations with others. I briefly compare my own suggestions with proposals from two reviews of primary education (Alexander, 2010; DCSF 2009) and the critique of education of Nel Noddings (Noddings 2005, 2006). I acknowledge the resistance to challenge to a traditional school curriculum, and the particular pressures towards a narrowing of the secondary curriculum from the Coalition Government in the United Kingdom. I stress that, in keeping with my values, I remain optimistic that we, adults and children, working together, as we hurtle through the 21st Century, can construct curricula that are right for our time; that connect together the small and big things that really matter. (Contains 6 notes and 5 tables.)
Descriptors: Curriculum Development, Foreign Countries, Values, Change Strategies, Educational Change, Educational Philosophy, Learning Activities, Educational Objectives, Curriculum Evaluation, Educational Practices, Curriculum Design, Educational Development
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A