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Mapping a Curriculum ‘Crisis’

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Geography Education's Potential and the Capability Approach

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Abstract

Curriculum writers have gone from the language of a ‘problem’ to that of a ‘crisis’, seen through the changing role of knowledge and skills, and different ideas about the aims of education from getting a job and achieving qualifications to a broader moral purpose. The arguments draw on ideas about a range of curricular ideologies and the recontextualisation of knowledge. In a Future 1 curriculum knowledge is inert—a set of facts to be learnt. A Future 2 curriculum is one which focuses on generic skills and competencies, drawing in notions of a moral education and a pupil-led ‘aims-based curriculum’. At the heart of the Future 3 curriculum is socially realist ‘powerful knowledge’, created by communities of experts working within the ‘disciplinary’ rules of their expertise. Powerful knowledge has been expressed through a number of subjects such as maths and physics and forms the basis of GeoCapabilities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The ‘comprehensive’ system was introduced in 1965, but many schools remained as grammar schools with different areas operating different systems. In the 2010s, with government support, some existing grammar schools expanded to new sites and welcomed more children.

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  1. Worcester Park, Surrey, UK

    Richard Bustin

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Bustin, R. (2019). Mapping a Curriculum ‘Crisis’. In: Geography Education's Potential and the Capability Approach. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25642-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25642-5_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25641-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25642-5

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