What are we Teaching

What are we Teaching Synopsis

This book is available directly from the Crown House Publishing website here

Written by Richard Bustin, What are we Teaching? discusses the importance of having a subject-based curriculum in schools and explores the responsibility that teachers, through their subject specialisms, have to help ensure this is achieved.

Richard Bustin is a teacher, researcher and teacher trainer. His new book What are we Teaching?: Powerful knowledge and a capabilities curriculum is born out of Richard’s conviction that each and every subject can be empowering and inspiring and can contribute distinctively to a young person’s education. He believes that every student is entitled to a powerful knowledge-led, subject-based curriculum. The ambitious view of education presented in his book is less about making alterations to the way in which schools operate and more about changing our understanding of what we teach and why. The book presents a fresh perspective on curriculum design, arguing that subjects are key to enabling young people to develop the powerful knowledge needed to flourish in our complex modern world.

Moving ideas beyond the ‘traditional vs progressive’ debates that have dominated education discourse, Richard challenges the overarching emphasis on exam performance at the expense of the broader benefits of subject knowledge and capabilities such as critical and creative thinking. Ultimately, this book invites teachers to consider why their subject specialisms are important as part of a whole school curriculum vision and throughout, Richard prompts teachers to evaluate their responsibilities as ‘curriculum makers’.

What are we Teaching? is research-based, using voices of real teachers who engaged with the question ‘what makes your subject powerful knowledge for young people’. Richard then examines these testimonies focusing on different subject areas, before offering advice on building a powerful knowledge and capabilities rich curriculum in schools. Each chapter also offers a set of reflective questions which can be used as part of ITE training or staff CPD.

This thought provoking yet accessible book firmly gives teachers the confidence to forge their own path as curriculum makers. It is an important contribution to the professional conversations about what counts as a thoughtful, enriching and fair curriculum and will certainly prove an invaluable resource for those refining and upgrading it.

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