Feature The Importance of schema-building and quests

THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHEMA- BUILDING AND QUESTS

How effective knowledge retrieval is the result of more than simply excellent day-to-day teaching. By Jonathan Marshall, Assistant Head – Academic Development and Teacher of MFL.

An increased recognition of Cognitive Load Theory's significance – and the subsequent emphasis in our teaching on forms of retrieval practice – is perhaps one of the most impactful changes on pupils' learning in the past decade.

However, whilst we improve pupils’ recall of knowledge in our day-to-day teaching through, for instance, retrieval roulette, spaced starters and Quizizz – which are all useful tools – how much attention are we paying to how the knowledge recalled fits into a coherent whole?

When planning retrieval practice, I would argue that our focus should be as much on curriculum design, as on the teaching methods we use. In particular, Ruth Ashbee (2021) proposes that we should consider how we are building pupils’ schema through our subject curriculums. She defines schema as being ‘webs of connected ideas, whose organisation carry meaning’ (2021: 17). In such curriculums, the content (eg, the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin) and procedural knowledge (eg, how to interpret sources) are sequenced in such a way that, together, they lead to understanding of the core concepts of our subjects (eg, how and why dictators emerge and historical narrative as something that is biased, partial and written to fulfil the ideological needs of the day).

When pupils are actively involved in building schema, they are challenged, and as a result the core concepts of a subject, supported with examples, are stored meaningfully in the long-term memory. Indeed, a coherent curriculum that builds pupils’ schema is probably the key tool in aiding retrieval, as thought has been put into what the learner already knows, before being built upon in a step-by-step manner that respects how memory works.

Note that a curriculum that builds schema effectively is not the same as an examination syllabus or assessment objectives. The latter are like the camera used to capture the winner of a race. Athletes should not be concerned by it; they should be focused on learning how to run well, putting their knowledge into practice and building on it.

Christine Counsell (2018) argues powerfully that one way of building pupils’ schema and understanding of core concepts is to view one’s curriculum as a series of quests. She states that each discipline is ‘a product and an account of an ongoing search for meaning, a quest for truth' (2018: 7). The truth might be the concepts concluded from empirical tests in Science, an ever-clearer argumentation in History, simpler logic in Maths, or greater beauty in the arts. In my own subject, Modern Languages, the quest is sometimes one of solving and producing (Ashbee, 2021). For instance, when faced with a particular situation, pupils learn to apply the language they know to communicate the most appropriate message. This requires careful sequencing of the teaching of grammatical structures and core vocabulary, such that one enables pupils to draw on the appropriate language required by the specific situation.

Similar solving and producing quests exist in Design and Technology and Computer Science. In English, History and Geography, the quest is interpretive in nature. In Art, Music and Drama, it is expressive. Counsell (2018) argues that the quest should include the types of questions one would ask when engaging in that discipline, as each pupil needs to understand how to make meaning in that subject, with reference to their existing schema. As we adapt our subject curricula, perhaps spurred on by the change in the school day from September 2023, we may ask ourselves: ‘What are the core concepts we want pupils to know to prepare them for life at 25?’ Rather than asking ‘How do we justify the inclusion of each piece of knowledge in our curriculum?’, we should pose the question: ‘How do these parts together mean that our pupils leave with a good understanding of our subject?’ and ‘How do they connect into a unified whole?’

In the curriculum strand of our Electives series this year, we have focused on what subject curriculums built around core concepts look like. Head of History, Shilpa Darbar, presented the process that she and her team adopted to redesign their curriculum and we have explored variations thereof in Languages and Geography. You can read about Shilpa’s work and that of our Head of English, Alex Greenfield, in a following article. It has been peer-reviewed and recently published in Impact, the journal of The Chartered College of Teaching. Next year, we will focus further on how to design curriculums that are akin to truth quests.

References: Ashbee, R., 2021. Curriculum: theory, culture and the subject specialisms. Routledge. Counsell, C., 2019. Taking curriculum seriously. Impact, (4), 7-8.