Community Curriculum Making: Going Places, Meeting People and Doing and Making Things

David Leat, Emeritus Professor of Curriculum Innovation, Newcastle University

In the last 8 years I have been working with a small number of schools in England and abroad who want to develop community links and/or use project-based learning to engage their students (there are some in Scotland too). In this seminar I will make the case for Community Curriculum Making (CCM) – a set of principles and practices to inform curriculum development which takes seriously the development of the whole person, while not ignoring the importance of subject knowledge. Community is more than the local area and should be thought of as the network of relationships that a school enjoys, as in a digital age community partners can be anywhere. Philosophically CCM is aligned with communitarianism and the view that an individual’s development is shaped by their interaction with community (it takes a village to raise a child?).

I will unpack three elements of the rationale for CCM:

• Firstly, the value of experiential learning, not least experience of place – going places
• Second relationships and social capital – meeting people
• Lastly human capability – doing and making things to find your talents

In practice CCM is characterised by collaborative and critical inter-disciplinary projects, with an inquiry focus, both drawing upon community resources and serving the community, ideally through students producing work (which might be a book, a report, an event, artwork, exhibition or film) for a public/community audience.

I will outline some inspiring examples and the indicative evidence of impact, discuss the wider beneficial outcomes for students and teachers gathered through interviews, and explain some of the challenges and system blockers.

If we think curriculum has a role to play in nurturing more fulfilled and competent adults and harmonious communities then CCM (and similar approaches) deserves some serious consideration.