What Are We Teaching?: Powerful Knowledge and a Capabilities Curriculum

Written by Richard Bustin, What are we Teaching?Powerful knowledge and a capabilities curriculum offers a fresh perspective on curriculum design, arguing that subjects are key to enabling young people to develop the powerful knowledge needed to flourish in a complex modern world. Moving ideas beyond the ’traditional vs progressive’ debates that have dominated education discourse, Richard Bustin challenges the overarching emphasis on exam performance at the expense of the broader benefits of subject knowledge and capabilities such as critical and creative thinking.

What are we Teaching? explores curriculum debates in relation to the current school climate, considering factors such as knowledge-led education, teaching to the test, and the challenge of teacher retention and recruitment issues. It includes new research involving teachers in real schools engaging with powerful knowledge, and it prompts teachers to evaluate their responsibilities as ’curriculum makers’. The book invites teachers to consider why their subject specialism is important as part of a whole school curriculum vision, and a provides language with which to articulate that.

Part One introduces the key theories on which the book is based, including different ways of making sense of knowledge, skills and values in the curriculum, powerful knowledge and educational capabilities. What are we Teaching?is research-based, using voices of real teachers who engaged with the question ’what makes your subject powerful knowledge for young people’, and Part Two, which focuses on different subject areas, examines these testimonies. The final part offers advice on building a powerful knowledge and capabilities rich curriculum in schools. Each chapter includes a set of reflective questions which can be used as part of ITE training or staff CPD.

Essential reading for teachers, senior and subject leaders and curriculum coordinators.