Arthur Chapman and Sandra Leaton Gray. 
Colleagues at the UCL Institute of Education were very excited a few weeks ago to see that the Department for Education had announced funding for a number of school-centred Curriculum Programme pilots worth £2.2 million.  These grants aim to support teachers in developing curriculum programmes in science, history and geography. We always like to see practitioner research encouraged, and thinking through curriculum issues is a good way of building a strong basis for professional practice. We were disappointed to see, however, that the DfE in this instance didn’t seem to have done its homework properly in drafting the specifications, which leaves them wanting from an educational point of view.
The main thing that seems to be lacking is a proper understanding of what teacher knowledge means. This is rather  (more…)