Open schools, open curriculum: towards a Future 3 scenario [abstract only]

In this presentation I will discuss the conditions for curriculum change in the UK in the context of the current debate on schools’ futures. In 1967 Bernstein characterised change in education as a shift, respectively, from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ schools and a change in emphasis in some of the main features of the school. Drawing on a case study I will re-examine this conception of open schools in the light of an emerging case of innovation in curriculum and pedagogy at one school in South Yorkshire. Using Young and Muller’s (2010) 3 Futures model of curriculum types as a methodological heuristic I will examine how teachers’ curriculum work aligns with a Future 3 curriculum that claims to match a teacher- and knowledge-led curriculum with a learner-engaged pedagogy. This insight is powerful because it offers an alternative to the simplistic traditional versus progressive binary currently on offer to schools.