It is common to believe that, if we just teach pupils enough – if we ensure they develop their declarative and procedural know- ledge, and perhaps their attitudes, dispositions and orientations – they will know how to arrive at judgements and how to make decisions. But, as many people who have refereed a sports match for the first time can confirm, this is not necessarily the case. One can be very well informed and well intentioned, and yet still make poor judgements or give bad decisions. Similarly, players can work hard in training, develop their skills, go into a match in the right frame of mind – and yet proceed to make poor choices.
Judgements and decisions always require application of knowledge – and application is not always straightforward. Often it requires practice and experience – as anyone learning
to drive will confirm. Judgements and decisions are always in some sense pragmatic. They are events. They need to be made here and now, often on the basis of incomplete and uncertain information. We need in our planning, therefore, to give atten- tion to the question of how we are going to help pupils exercise judgement and make sound decisions.
Subject teaching
Let’s consider how these ideas can be applied in subject teaching. As usual, we will use the example of architecture.
In one town near where I live, there is a debate over the future of the market square. At present it is used two days a week for a traditional market. The rest of the time it is used as a car park. The market traders are obviously happy with this and many of the residents support the market. Some people, however, argue that it is a waste of a prime site. They argue that the site should be developed to provide an extension to the modern shopping centre that is adjacent.
Suppose this issue provided the focus for a module in an architecture course. The model of cognition that we have developed in this chapter can be used to help create a rounded, cognitively balanced, module. Here are some examples:
Declarative knowledge: Several types of empirical knowledge
are useful here. Examples include facts about: the site (e.g. its dimensions); the authorities concerned and the decision-making processes involved; and the laws and regulations that might apply. Similarly, several types of conceptual knowledge would prove useful. Examples of relevant concepts include: revenue; taxation; heritage; consultation; tendering; vested interest; scar- city; competition; and so on. A mixture of extensive and intensive knowledge is likely to be required. For example, pupils might look briefly at a number of other towns in order to collect a range of possibilities and then in more detail at one or two comparable sites to see how the way they are used works in practice.
Procedural knowledge: Relevant procedures here are likely,
methods. They might range from surveying the site through sur- veying opinion to forecasting footfall and drafting aesthetic designs.
Outlooks: There would be opportunities both to investigate
stakeholders’ viewpoints – how, for example, do traders, shop- pers, developers and councillors look at these things? There would also be the opportunity to employ a range of perspectives – eco- nomic, aesthetic, legal and so on.
Mental events: The project in fact lends itself ideally to the devel-
opment of judgement and decision-making, for example through simulated meetings. Pupils could be asked to evaluate a range of proposals, using a varied set of criteria, and to make a recommendation.
Bringing it all together
Thanks to the influence both of Progressive thinkers and of management thinking, educators have long been concerned to move on from the view that education is simply about learning facts. In many ways this is healthy – except that in looking for a contrast to facts, there has been an over-reliance on the term ‘skill’. The term has been used increasingly lazily and mindlessly: it has tended not only to drive out the other procedural terms, such as technique and method, but also the terms we’ve used above to describe outlooks and mental events – attitudes, disposi- tions, orientations, judgements and decisions. One hears edu- cators talk, ludicrously, of such things as patience or ambition or enterprise as a skill. The danger is that we then either attempt to teach as skills things that aren’t – or that we simply omit those things that aren’t skills and so imbalance our pupils’ cognit- ive development.
This chapter has been based on the assumption that we need to understand what it is we’re trying to teach – what cognition is – so that we can be sure we teach it adequately. In particular, it has sought to provide a balanced, workable, model that can be used in planning and preparation. The following chart summarizes the model:
The next chapter uses this model as a building block in curric- ulum design.
Reflect on either a course you teach or a course you have studied. Focus on one part of it – say, a module, unit or sequence of lessons lasting about a month. Analyze it using the chart above (Table 5.2). So far as possible, list a few examples of each sub-component.
Though I’m reluctant to reduce the content of this chapter to a single sentence, if I had to, it would be:
When planning to teach, don’t allow the notion of ‘skill’ to swamp other kinds of cognition: give explicit attention and due weight to all the main cognitive components.
Further reading
I have found books on sports coaching and psychology much more helpful than texts on teaching. Sports professionals have
Table 5.2 Cognitive components
Component Sub-components
Declarative knowledge Empirical/conceptual Extensive/intensive Procedural knowledge Skills
Techniques Methods
Outlooks Attitudes
Dispositions Orientations Mental events Judgements
often thought long and hard about such aspects as skill acquisition and attitude formation. It can be stimulating, therefore, to con- sider parallels between, on the one hand, coaching and training and, on the other, teaching and learning in skill acquisition. Use- ful, accessible, sport texts include Kevin Wesson, Sport and PE.
6
Curriculum
In the past I have sometimes seen documents, purporting to be curriculum documents, that did little more than list the subject matter that pupils were expected to cover over a certain period of time. They were set out in list form and read like tables of contents. Thankfully, it is a long while since I have seen such documents. Most educators today are aware that there is more to a curriculum than this. But what else, precisely, is required beyond the listing of subject matter?
In The Cubic Curriculum, Ted Wragg recommends that we should see curricula as at least three-dimensional. The first dimension con- sists of school subjects. These can be set out as a one-dimensional list. For example:
Biology. Geography. Modern language. Physical education. Technology. and so on.
On the second dimension Wragg lists cross-curricular themes. These concern issues that people believe should figure in a curriculum, but not simply as separate subjects. These might include, say, environmental education, which might be taught
across a number of subjects such as geography, biology, techno- logy and so on. Similarly, creativity might be taught across a number of subjects – perhaps even all of them.
By combining these two dimensions, we can construct a matrix. For an example, see Table 6.1:
Table 6.1 Curriculum matrix
Environment Creativity Health
Biology Geography Modern language Physical education Technology
This is certainly an improvement. But Wragg suggests we should go further by adding a third dimension consisting of modes of teaching and learning. Examples include imitating, observing, discovering and so on.
We can now envisage the curriculum as a cube: on one axis we set out the various subjects; on the second come the cross-curricular themes; and, on the third, modes of teaching and learning.
Although Wragg gives examples of what might feature on each axis, he is less concerned to push any particular version of the curriculum than simply to establish a multi-dimensional view of the curriculum. This chapter will, therefore, adopt a three- dimensional view while using rather different categories from Wragg’s. I have chosen to use different categories here, in part to simplify the model and in part to make it more appropriate for individual teacher’s planning (Wragg’s book was aimed more generally, at the level of whole school and policy development).