This efficiency and effectiveness movement in schooling has been criticised by Rawling (2001) and McCullogh (2000) for de-professionalising subject teachers and
downgrading the teacher’s role to that of classroom technician. With the control and obedience required, comes accountability, as Kelly (2008) examines.
Kelly (2008) offers a way of looking at curriculum as either process (emphasis on principles) or product (emphasis on aims and objectives). Kelly argues in favour of teacher agency in curriculum design, using Stenhouse’s (1975) view of the teacher as researcher and Eisner’s (2002) argument for teacher action research. Kelly (2008) gives an historical account of curriculum to illustrate how teacher autonomy has since been increasingly undermined since the ‘Golden age’ of 1944–1970s (Lawton 1980) by the ‘power-coercive’ strategies of the state, such as inspections and public league tables.
60 Kelly (2008) thus contributes to the notion that the curriculum is increasingly controlled by the state.
Moore (2004) drawing on Ball (1999) approaches dominant ‘ideology’ from the field of teaching, with the rise of the discourse of the professional teacher as the ‘competent craftsperson’ which reveals an ideology of social efficiency and neoliberalism in seeing the teacher as technically skilled, but anti-intellectual in a culture of managerialism. The ‘competent craftsperson’ discourse is part of a wider social efficiency curriculum
ideology in a narrative of ‘modernisation’. A modernisation narrative justifies the teaching profession driving toward order and completeness in the curriculum, so that an uncontested, finished curriculum product can be delivered. ‘Modernisation’ may be interpreted as ‘state control’ and a shift away from teacher autonomy in ‘the death of progressive education’ (Lowe, 2007). With curriculum making subsumed by technical concerns of effective teaching there has been ‘a narrowing of teachers’ work’ (Morgan, 2012:157). The possibilities for the teacher’s engagement as curriculum maker are not helped by curriculum change becoming an increasingly centralised process (Rawling 2015, 2016, section 2.5.3).
Several arguments have been made for the teacher to be curriculum ‘developer’ including a critical view of the competent craftsperson discourse, seeing this as downgrading of teacher to effective deliverer of an imposed curriculum, for example Connelly and Clandinin (1988), Crombie-White (1997), Brighouse (1994), Skilbeck (1990), McKernan (1996), Eisner (2002) and Sachs (2003). Lambert and Morgan’s curriculum making (2010) is located in the same, critical perspective, which argues for the teacher as public intellectual rather than as ‘competent craftsperson’.
61 2.5.4.2 Curriculum as ‘text’ and ‘context’ – the importance of local
differences
Some literature in the field of geography and curriculum ‘ideologies’ during this period, such as Rawling (2001) pays close attention to the values, traditions and ideologies revealed in the process of producing the National Curriculum, a written document to be delivered by teachers, by law. Ball and Bowe (1992) and Roberts (1996) focus on the National Curriculum as it is enacted and embodied in schools. The important conclusion from both is that the National Curriculum is, in reality, not a uniform ‘national’
experience, but is strongly mediated by differences between teachers, departments and schools. These differences are often in values and cultures or ‘ideologies’ in Roberts’ words (1996).
Ball and Bowe (1992) contest the meaning of ‘National Curriculum’. They argue that the ‘texts’ of the policy and written orders are not implemented evenly, but are subject to different interpretations of the ‘context’. These four contexts are a school or
department’s capacities, contingencies, commitment to existing approaches and
innovation histories, each of which will vary, thus affecting how ‘National Curriculum’ is interpreted. Drawing on Barthes (1976) Ball and Bowe (1992) argue that ‘texts’ can be interpreted in a ‘writerly’ way (active and dynamic) or a ‘readerly’ way (passive and accepting). Ball and Bowe’s research, in stressing the importance of local context and the role of ‘writerly’ teachers to develop their local curriculum, resonates with the Geographical Association’s ‘local solutions’ approach to combining curriculum and professional development work (Mitchell, 2006) and the notion of the teacher as ‘curriculum maker’ (Lambert and Morgan, 2011). Ball and Bowe’s (1992) argument is that ‘curriculum’ can only be understood when text and context are examined together.
62 This implies that individual teachers ‘make’ the curriculum, as well as government policy, subject association guidance or textbook, for example.
Roberts (1996) building on the notion that the curriculum is not evenly ‘delivered’, but enacted in contexts, adds the perspective of department ‘ideologies’. Using both values and ‘ideologies’, Roberts (1996) draws on research into the earlier centralised
curriculum initiatives of the Schools’ Council projects, and rejects the argument that differences between a centralised ‘text’ and the experience in the classroom are due to problems of communication from centre to periphery. Rather, there are different values or ‘ideologies’ at work. Her empirical work identified three department ‘types’:
Type A) curriculum as content knowledge
Type B) curriculum as framework of ideas, skills and values Type C) curriculum as developmental process for students
These categories resemble the various classifications of curriculum ideology (section 2.4) and relate to Young and Muller’s (2010) different purposes of knowledge. But the significance of Roberts’ work is to argue that different department ‘ideologies’ produce a different version of a national curriculum, despite the intention of the National
Curriculum (a text) to remove difference and to control teaching. Her final remark suggests department contexts hold greater power over the enacted curriculum, than the ‘text’ of the National Curriculum.
‘…in 1993 departments A, B and C resemble their former selves more than they do each other.’
63 1988 – 2008 saw state control over curriculum extended and with it a deepening of neoliberal ideology in schooling. However, the teacher and the geography department could still influence curriculum enactment.
The themes constructed in this period are summarised in table 4, below.
Theme Ways in which themes are constructed 1988-2008
Power/control Power and control of the state (often at ‘arm’s length’) over curriculum decision making deepened through further versions of the statutory National Curriculum, inspections and published league tables. Academic subjects became less powerful curriculum influences than bureaucratic concerns to show that ‘objectives’ were achieved and ‘results’ produced. Conflict Conflict is less noticeable in this era than a lack of conflict. A new
settlement for teachers was reached with growing acceptance of a technicist model of teaching and a social efficiency curriculum value/belief system. Resistance to radical change deepened in schools, such that propositions to rethink the curriculum were seen as lacking common sense. However a counter position and source of resistance to the ‘efficiency’ curriculum continued through geography educational research arguing for the importance and power of subject learning (such as Roberts 1996, 2003, Rawling, 2001 and Morgan 2002, 2003).
Scales of influence
The nation state deepened its influence, albeit indirectly. Locally devolved decision making was influenced by government controlled curriculum and inspection frameworks.
Value/belief systems
A social efficiency value/belief system dominated and neoliberal hegemony was established (Apple 2004).
Change State control over the curriculum changed the relationship between teachers and the curriculum, making their professional role more technical/
managerial and less intellectually engaged with the subject content of curriculum. There was curriculum change, driven for ‘efficiency’ and economic motives rather than radical (reconstructionist) or scholarly- academic motives.
Table 4, Themes constructed through applying literature in the field of curriculum studies to the geography curriculum, 1988-2008
64 2.5.5 2008 to 2016 - a new crisis of capitalism and a knowledge turn
Since 2008, the economic, social and political landscape has changed again, with effects on education and curriculum. A single broad theme can be drawn from this period, of intensified debate over education in all respects; its purposes, the level of accountability of schools to economy and society, the role of teachers and the curriculum. In this intensified debate, just as in the late 1970s and 80s, different value/belief systems are revealed. Debate over the curriculum, encouraged by a White Paper (DfE 2010) and a curriculum consultation, ahead of a new National Curriculum, has tended to focus on the role of knowledge. A ‘knowledge turn’ can be discerned (Lambert 2011) in which the power of knowledge is contested. In the recent debate over the role of knowledge in curriculum, ‘ideologies’ and their associated educational narratives can be identified, such as radical education for social change (Morgan, 2009, 2011) and a blend of
schooling for conservative cultural restoration and neoliberalism to provide workers and consumers for economic growth (DfE, 2010, 2016).