Exploring Learning

In my last post, I wrote about making space for deeper learning. I reflected on a principle that has increasingly shaped my thinking about curriculum design: do less, better. Not less ambition or lower expectations, but greater intentionality about what deserves students' time, teachers' attention and the limited cognitive space available for learning. This week, my reading has pushed that thinking one step further. If we are going to remove things from learning, we need to be very clear about what we are removing, because there is an important difference between removing a barrier and removing the thinking. Cognitive load has been something of a red thread woven through my work with teachers and learners since I first stepped into my current role. It has shaped conversations about curriculum breadth, lesson design, assessment, instruction, scaffolding, collaboration and the increasing number of systems students are expected to navigate. Much of our curriculum work over the pas...

  At the end of the last academic year, I wrote about the work of untangling the threads . I reflected on several years of sustained work to create greater clarity and coherence across curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, and collaboration.  When I first stepped into my role in 2022, many of those elements felt like threads within a tangled ball. They were all connected, but it was not immediately clear which thread to pull first, or whether pulling too hard in one direction might tighten the knot elsewhere. I decided to begin with the written curriculum. Not because documentation itself was the goal, but because shared clarity about what students should understand, know, and be able to do provides the foundation for everything else. It allows teachers to make more purposeful decisions about learning design, assessment, feedback, access and challenge. It creates a common language for collaboration and helps connect what is intended, what is taught, what is assessed, and what stud...

This reflection draws on established research in curriculum design, instructional leadership, feedback, and school improvement, as well as my ongoing doctoral study in curriculum and learning sciences. It is written from a leadership perspective and informed by sustained engagement with departments, teams, and classrooms throughout this half term. The intention is to make visible the research-informed rationale underpinning current and future priorities for teaching, learning, and collaboration. A Shift in Perspective This half term, my work has taken me away from classrooms and more into meetings. I have spent sustained time with several Heads of Department in strategic planning discussions, in departmental meetings focused on implementation, and in conversations with teachers and parents regarding learning, assessment, and progress. While this is a different vantage point from earlier reflections grounded in classroom observation, it has provided an additional and highly valuable per...