A sense of wonder
If we are being serious about the development of a meaningful curriculum that is both intended and enacted (William 2013), its defining features need to be made explicit. Discrete interventions can otherwise feel like something added on, their impact accordingly limited. Development can often be brought relatively easily to curricula in younger years, where there is a relative degree of freedom. But it can also take place in the middle and upper school years, which are inevitably more defined by externally prescribed syllabuses.
The ideal and its implementation
A curriculum is ideally conceived as something created more than it is enforced, one that meets the requirements of final exams, but is driven and/or framed more by a broader sense of purpose.
We might, for example, see the study of a collection of poems in a given GCSE English anthology, not as a series of analytical boxes to be ticked in preparation for the exam, but through a series of enquiry questions, or in terms of a larger concept, such as the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Or we might examine aspects of 20th century US race relations and Apartheid South Africa as much in terms of what they comparatively ‘say’ about the power of individuals to enact change over time, as the content particular to each. Inspiring material might also come from cross-curricular approaches. Content prescribed by examination boards can be absorbed into wider areas of exploration that aim for greater intellectual depth and a sense of value. In other words, curricula do not need to be defined by nature of the assessment tasks that come along at the end.