Living Curriculum - A Conversation with Gregory Biggs and Tristian Stobie

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

The point is a critical one, is that curriculum to me is forever and everywhere a local construct.

When we find ourselves not looking for deliverables on votes, we suddenly realize that a teacher or a leader or a school or a politician is a guest in a learner's life. The learner is the only constant.

Hi everybody. Thanks for joining me again for another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast with me, Tim Logan. In this week's episode, I'm speaking with two prominent leaders in the field of international curriculum, Gregory Biggs and Tristan Stobbe. Gregory is the director of Fieldwork Education, the organization that develops a range of international curriculum for learners aged 2 to 14 across the early years, primary, and middle years, known by many as the IEC, IPC, and IMYC. These curricula are learned and taught in over 1,000 schools in more than 90 countries worldwide. Prior to leading the team at Fieldwork Education, Gregory was the Global Product Manager for the IB's diploma and career-related programmes located in Singapore, before which he worked with governments and ministries on structuring national education reform efforts across the Middle East and Southeast Asia based in Abu Dhabi. Tristan Stobie's career has spanned a wide range of educational contexts. Starting as a teacher and then secondary principal, he has worked in New Zealand, New Zealand, UK, Lesotho, Monaco, Austria, and the Netherlands. Tristan joined Cambridge International as Director of Education in 2011 and was appointed Director of Curriculum and Qualifications Development in 2020. He leads the design and development of Cambridge programmes and qualifications for learners aged 5 to 19. Tristan has also worked in a number of roles for the International Baccalaureate organisation. He was involved in the early development of the International Schools Association curriculum, which became the IB MYP. And later he became Head of IB Diploma Programme Curriculum Development.

Hi, Tim. Hi, Gregory.

Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Tristan. How are you both?

Good morning.

Very good. How are you?

Yeah, doing very good, thank you.

Good. So thank you very much for joining me. It's a real pleasure to have you both have the opportunity to talk curriculum. And teaching and learning and assessment and all the good stuff that you both are very, very much engaged in at Cambridge International for you, Tristan, and of course at Fieldwork Education for you, Gregory. So obviously I've had Siva Kumari and Oli Pekka Heinonen from the IB on the podcast before, and with the IB, Cambridge, and Fieldwork being the three big curriculum frameworks and supporting organizations that help international schools a lot, so it's, it's great to be able to get some different perspectives. But I recognize today you're speaking you know, as an individual rather than representing your organization, let's say. But I'm looking forward to getting into some really interesting discussion about curriculum. So welcome to you both.

Thank you very much. It's really, really great to spend some time, and across those three organizations, I think there is one of mutual respect. And so really great to spend some time with yourself and also Tristan this morning.

Great pleasure, Tim Logan.

Good, thank you. Well, and I know obviously you've both in previous lives worked with the IB, so there is a real kind of interconnection there. So yeah, I think one of, as we've discussed in the preparation for this, it's— there's quite often a lot of confusion around some of the language. So it might be useful just to start with, just to think about what is it— if we're talking about curriculum primarily, what is it that we're specifically talking about? And perhaps we'll start with you, Tristan, and then over to you, Gregory, just to clarify some definitions. Because I think having worked with many different people from different backgrounds, people will have different understandings of what they mean by that. So for you, Tristan, if we can start, we'll explore that space first, and then we'll get into some of the issues around that. So what's, what's What does curriculum mean for you?

It's a good place to start because there's a lot of confusion, as you correctly point out. People often are talking about curriculum, they mean completely different things in their conversation. One way of looking at curriculum is on a continuum from a sort of narrow definition, like the sort of the 9th grade biology curriculum, for example, slightly broadening that into the program of studies for the 9th grade, and then the program of studies for the secondary school or the whole school. You can see how it's getting broader. All of that's referring to the planned program, teaching usually the timetable program, what's often called the formal curriculum. But as we get broader, and in many contexts, the curriculum has a broad meaning about the whole educational experience that's planned that the student receives. And then of course, we have to distinguish the difference between what is intended, planned, written, from what is actually learned and received. So yeah, that's the way I understand curriculum. And I think, I mean, for me, for this conversation, we should be talking about a broad definition of curriculum curriculum, and I would define that as all the learning experiences that are planned and experienced that students encounter as a consequence of the education provided by the school.

Interesting.

So there's definitely a breadth to that that includes, as you say, the enacted curriculum, or, you know, people might say, or the experiences, whether they're planned or not. I think that's an interesting thing. I'd love to come back to that. But Gregory, where do you stand on this question?

It is a term that's used by individuals, organizations, and nations even in interchangeable ways, and that creates many misunderstandings. And I agree with much of what Tristan has said there. It's— there is a continuum. It is used interchangeably with terminologies of ideology, and that formalized curriculum helps bring together for the International Curriculum here in fieldwork education the written, the plans, the experienced, and the evaluated curriculum. For myself, it represents more of an ecosystem that combines the planning, the preparation, the day-to-day learning experiences, and the outcomes of that, that learners experience. It's very much an experiential piece, not necessarily solely content, not necessarily solely the ideology, not necessarily solely the experience, but actually the ecosystem of all of that experience.

Wow.

Well, that's even broader, right? I mean, the whole interactional ecosystem around a curriculum. It's interesting. One of the things that I put out piece of writing a while ago about the etymological roots of the word curriculum, and obviously it comes from the Latin 'course' or 'run' actually, originally, and I think that's one of the experiences that many people have of curriculum is that it is like a pre-planned race that everybody gets set off and everybody's almost competing against each other for how— who can finish it first or get through it first, or you know the terrible words like 'coverage' and I had a maths teacher that I worked with before talking about pouring content down students' throats, you know, that idea of you just got to get through it, it's a rush to the finish line, right? So I don't know, any reflections on that?

Yeah, indeed. Obviously those Latin origins took to run a course, verb being run there and the noun being course, but noun not defined and how that running takes place also not defined. And whilst it does come from a solid origin, its interpretation over generation and generation has become so ambiguous that we now find, yes, that interpretation of depositing content down students' throats, if you will, as one interpretation. And we also have the other interpretation on the other end of the spectrum, if you will, which is to focus on the experiential piece and to enjoy the run and to observe the course and to see where that is taking place. So it does obviously come from that as an origin, but its interpretation, I think, is still live and active and represents so much really, really strong debate that we hear on— this is a fantastic podcast, but much of the conversations that we have and many of those debates are are rooted in fundamentally epistemology as to what we are claiming that we know to be true here. What is the running and what is the course?

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah.

To me, a key idea about curriculum is direction. It's sort of setting the direction for the school. And it's also making a declaration about what's important, what matters. It's values-based. No curriculum possibly can escape from being values-based. The values may be explicit or they may be implicit, but you can unpack them very quickly. I hate the idea of content coverage, pouring knowledge down a student's necks. And, you know, I'd like to return to that when we look at pedagogy and approaches to curriculum. But you're right, it is an unfortunate reality of the lived experience, very rarely the planned experience, of curriculum in schools that, you know, the language used and the perception is it's all about covering content, getting to qualifications, end game, as fast as possible. And I would like to move away from that.

Yeah. And do you think there's a disjuncture there between those doing the planning and those doing the living of and the experiencing, you know, in terms of the teachers? Because I'd love to move on to the pedagogic question, but as you said, is there just a disjuncture there in what is feasible or what is actionable as you're enacting the curriculum?

Well, going back to Gregory's point, a school is a complex system of interdependent parts, and you can't consider curriculum in isolation. And often a school and teachers will be well-intentioned, but if it's league tables driven as in England, for example, often the case has been that, and schools are held to account in Ofsted inspections based upon attainment standards that are quite narrowly defined, then behaviour will adjust. And the actual, you know, the way in which teachers work in a system like that, the incentives are not aligned to produce the sorts of things we want. So one of the things I loved about working in international schools and international education is that schools had far more freedom to define their mission and vision. And to make sure that the planned curriculum, you know, was something that was meaningful and also doable.

Yeah, so, well, let's move then maybe on to that, some of that, because you've already brought in the idea of values, and clearly some of the values are internally set and kind of negotiated, but many of them come in from the broader context, as you say, the values around exam outcomes, et cetera. I was framing it as, as like a power relationship between curriculum and instruction. And what's the relationship there, do you think? And also, is there a power relationship? Is it that the curriculum dictates or strongly directs the instructional environment and experience, or is it the other way around? Or is there a dialogue between the two? Gregory?

For myself, Tim, it's a bit of a disappointing debate about power, and I think the power element is a misunderstanding. That's, for me, it shouldn't be an influence on the relationship. The relationship should be of one of utter symbiosis. Each should be dependent upon each other and rely upon each other and benefit from each other. I think the misunderstanding comes from perhaps a lack of day-to-day experience or exposure to how the two integrate within the school setting. So What's disappointing is that the power element comes to the fore in the pragmatic realities of this world where decisions need to be made, or for example, a vote may need to be won, or an initiative maybe needs carried out, and therefore prioritization needs to happen. What happens first? Do we revise a curriculum or shift how that is implemented? So, so the power, I believe, is a misunderstanding in the relationship. For me, it should be utterly symbiotic. The way in which a written curriculum brings together its underpinning theory cannot be in isolation from the experience curriculum. So going through the planned curriculum, you'll, you'll take that theory and you'll articulate perhaps some of the content and the structure of, of what is to be implemented. But that experiential piece in the experience part of the curriculum would completely fall down if the symbiosis wasn't there. What we do tend to see is that as we work across wider populations, sometimes more informed, is that we look for common understandings, and those common understandings tend to come with data and particularly numerical data, and that introduces the assessment component and the evaluation component. So where Tristan, for example, referred to the league tables earlier, sometimes the interpretation of a, of a school's performance would be where it, here in the UK, achieves on the league tables. And that has almost nothing to do with the written curriculum, the planned curriculum, the experienced curriculum. Often that's to do with the evaluated part of the curriculum. And so the power piece is introduced perhaps by a stakeholder that's not experiencing the day-to-day within the school. It is a disappointing debate, but it's It's one that I appreciate is part of the pragmatic realities of life.

It'd be nice to be idealistic, but we live in the real world, right?

Indeed.

Tristan?

Yeah, the question reminds me of a quote from Dylan William, who's always worth listening, but I disagree with him on this point.

He's joining me on the podcast very soon.

He is? Good. Well, Dylan says in one of his books, curriculum is pedagogy. He takes an extreme position on that question, and he says words to the effect, a bad curriculum well taught is invariably a better experience than a good curriculum badly taught. What matters is teaching. And I think I'd like to make two points in relation to that. I mean, apart from the fairly obvious point where I think he is correct that no school can be better than the quality of teachers in it, I think he's wrong in terms of the importance of— and this is really supporting what Greg said earlier— the importance of curriculum in setting the culture and direction of the school so that teachers feel free to be empowered creative professionals they have a common language that the curriculum gives them, a common direction, certain standards that are identified, and they have the freedom to enact that in a way that makes it engaging for students. To me is the role of curriculum. And obviously a good curriculum, well taught, is the best outcome possible.

Yeah, I think, I mean, the power question is obviously, it's a shame to have to talk about it, but I think we do. In the sense that, as you said, Tristan, earlier, that you can't not have a values-based curriculum. There are implicit values in the way the curriculum is designed about what you think is important about how to live or how to be or how to know. Those are implicit in the way the curriculum is written, and I think that then translates into how that is then interpreted and then implemented and experienced. And if you take, like, if you take an example of the knowledge-rich curriculum models that, you know, in the UK they've moved towards the Hirschian kind of ideas, Michael Gove policies, etc. That has a very clear steer on a particular instructional mode built into the values of the, you know, knowledge is the most important thing that children should be learning because skills don't exist without knowledge, etc. We know those arguments. But I'm just taking that as an example because that very definitely dictates, I would say, what is the desired experience for young people and therefore the instructional mode that is used to create that experience, right? That's, that's maybe a kind of extreme example because we know there's a lot of other things going on and teachers are never just teaching knowledge. I fully recognize that, but I'm saying just if we take the intended values or ideology of the curriculum, there is something in there about a particular steer towards an instructional mode.

Yeah, there is a reason that decisions are made at, particularly at national level, which is often to reinforce culture, and knowledge-rich curriculum enables a community to have a shared experience of, and what is defined as, that culture. As Tristan refers to earlier, working within international schools or independent schools or even those state schools who work within structures that are somewhat imposed on them, but create a professional freedom within that and a flexibility to push those boundaries, can focus on, on what they believe is best for the learner, not the culture. So perhaps when we discuss about power, it's not, not simply between the curriculum and its instruction, if you will, but actually that the motives behind the decision. So for the International Curriculum, we look at knowledge, skills, and understanding equally. And the assessments for improving learning is based around the key skills, in fact, that the acquisition of knowledge through a curriculum is almost, with respect, more simple to achieve because it's more finite and somewhat tangible. And when a culture is looking to be embedded across a national community for its reasons that it will have, that's actually quite different to focusing on what perhaps should be the priority, which is that of the learner. And yes, it is ideological to say that, but when we find ourselves not looking for deliverables on votes and not considering a 3 to 4 year power structure, then actually we suddenly realize that a teacher or a leader or a school or a politician is a guest in a learner's life. The learner is the only constant, whether they are currently in early primary, middle, senior, or even higher education or beyond. They are the only constant. And these decisions are temporary in their permanent existence. So that power relationship actually comes back to the values that Tristan refers to. So it almost becomes sort of like a spiraling ball wall to think, well, actually, where do we draw the line and where do we say, okay, what is important? And when we work with international schools, when we work with independent schools, all those state schools who are willing to push the boundary, we actually draw the line on the learner and we say, this, this is our priority, this is our permanent, and we're aiming to, to focus on that. But, but yeah, indeed, the values and where those decisions are made, that they come from a motive which sometimes will, will not be overt.

I would agree. Often that's very implicit, right? And I think it's Sometimes it's dressed up in an evidence-based, research-informed practice, right? And I think that's one of the things that's very interesting about movements like ResearchEd in the UK and things like that. There is clearly a political values-based agenda going on there, but there's also, there's a direction to look at the research as though it's a self-evident truth that the research says we should teach knowledge, et cetera. I don't want to divert the conversation just into that, into that particular topic, but it, I think it's, it's a more extreme example of a particular ideological position. On curriculum and therefore instruction.

A couple of comments to build on that. I prefer Michael Young's work on powerful knowledge to Hirsch because I think it's more complete and better nuanced. And he talks about students needing to be able to access ways of thinking and problem solving. So it's knowledge as understanding, not knowledge as just content that they would not easily have access to at home without professional instruction. And that this, this is really important for social mobility so that they can, you know, that they have the chance to achieve in all walks of life. And so that going to school is, you know, to me is about powerful knowledge in part. That's not the whole picture, but that is part of it. Uh, and I particularly liked your podcast with Daniel Willingham, who is actually perceived by many to be a traditionalist in terms of the way he writes, a lot about memory, long-term memory, but it came across in the interview that You know, this is a false dichotomy. I'm really sorry. There's a lot of nonsense talked about traditional progressive divide. There's a sweet spot in the middle, and that's where schools need to work.

Yeah, I, I think there's a hugely important conversation that is just beginning about all of these topics in terms of of knowing and knowledge. And I, I think it's a much deeper thing actually, cuz we've had a very, very narrow bias towards propositional knowledge. But I think that would take us off into a, maybe another podcast episode, but just to bring it back then to the, this conversation, I think, I mean, Gregory, you mentioned, I like the way you phrased that, that the, the learner is the constant and then these other people are guests in that learner's life. And that's maybe where we can move to next. I think there is a, again, there's a tension perhaps between the kind of scaffolding structure and the standards of a curriculum. You know, we've thought about what we want students to learn, whether it's skills, knowledge, understanding, character strengths, all sorts of things that they might, may be as outcomes. But we've thought about that first as a group of leaders, adults, policymakers, whoever, whoever they are. But then is there a tension between that structural element and the more flexible, personalized, and let's say emergent requirements of seeing that learner at the center of that experience?

There's a potential danger of a conflict, and that is the reality in many schools. But again, I'm just— I'd like to build on what I just previously said. I think to me, the definition of a good school is a school that has clear articulated standards that relate to powerful knowledge in a formal curriculum, but also to equally, arguably more valued learning, in particular around areas like well-being and learning to learn. And those standards help scaffold and also help measure progress. So where is the learner? What do we need to do to improve? How do we move learning forward? So all of that's the case, but at the same time, there needs to be space in the curriculum. There is a great danger that curriculum becomes overloaded. And you crowd out things. And, and one of the things I've always fought against is schools doing too many qualifications. Curriculum is not the same as qualifications. Particularly for some parents, they think more is better. I like the slogan introduced by Singapore about 10 years ago that less is more. Singapore, operating in a highly competitive Confucian heritage culture context, stripped down some of the content from their national curriculum it's still content heavy, let's be clear, extremely demanding, but they stripped down some of it and they infused a lot more social skills, interpersonal learning, you know, experiential learning into it. So just quickly before moving over to Greg, I think Finland's also an interesting example because if you read a lot of the press and listen to a lot, you know, talk about Finland, you get the impression that they've done away with traditional education and replaced it with phenomenon-based learning. That, that's simply not true. Finland is grounded in standards. They have high levels of creative teacher professionalism, a highly educated teacher workforce, but they have a lot of academic standards. And the vast majority of the curriculum, if you would get to go and visit a school in Finland, would appear to be traditional subject-based disciplinary learning. They have a requirement that students do some project-based phenomenon-based learning, which I think is desirable, but it's not the whole curriculum. So again, we misrepresent what the reality of high-performing jurisdictions actually is.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Gregory?

Yeah, it's a fascinating question, and I guess there's a simple answer and a more complex answer. The simple answer about the tension element is indeed that attention is represented. Attention is represented anywhere where you achieve a shared definition across a mass population, and that can be at the macro level of the nations and the initiatives that Tristan outlines, or it could be at and the micro level within, within a school and a classroom. Within a school and a classroom, for example, of a cohort size of 25 learners, you're going to potentially have 25 different interpretations of reality. And so when we have a scaffolding structure with standards that comes through a curriculum, for me, it's that tension is represented or indeed mitigated by one of perspective and interpretation. So that perspective and interpretation, if you have a, let's say, a societal norm where there is I'm going to say conform, but I mean that in a positive intention. So if we have a conformance to what is behind the standards and how the standards manifest themselves, then actually you get a societal cohesion of working towards those standards in a positive way. However, we know particularly in the international school and with greater mobility of learners now, and even in the state sectors around the world, that that common population, even within a classroom, school, wider population, community, society, suddenly questions those norm bases of that shared understanding. So I believe that there is a tension. I think that that tension is mitigated currently and increasingly so through technology. The role of a teacher to be able to nuance their delivery and interpretation, the evaluation of that curriculum for a learner, it's assisted by technology as because they are confronted with a scale and scope challenge. How do they take, for example, a shared common set of standards and interpret that through the mindset of each individual learner so that they can continue the trajectory of their own learning. That is a challenge of scale and scope. And with that, technology can assist. But I would hope that we aren't in a world in the near future of the shared learning experience as being taken away. That shared learning experience, whether or not we have defined standards or expectations of a curriculum, for example, we can't take learning out of life. Yeah. So So the life experiences through school are some of the most powerful experiences that we will ever have, and they, they involve the, and the social elements, the, the enjoyment, the play, the activities, as well as the defined learning according to the standards. So if we are to potentially nuance learning to a point where we remove those social experiences, then we're removing a huge aspect of what school learning is. So yes, there is a tension. That tension, I believe, is mitigated by perspective and interpretation, but also alleviated to a degree with technology. We can enjoy that tension to a degree. We shouldn't be in a position, I believe, and it's not nice to say we should and we shouldn't do things, but you had a lovely conversation with, um, Gert about the enjoyment of the process, that process of learning and that process of growing together is invaluable.

No, that's interesting. And I think I'd love to pick up on a couple of those points. The point about conformity, Gregor, is interesting, especially within the Finnish context. Come back to you, Tristan, because I think one of the things that's come up there is as the society has become more diverse, they've struggled a bit more to adapt and change to that situation, right? With an increasing level of immigration into the country and diversity of perspectives and again, maybe norms and understandings of the world. What was working perhaps doesn't work so well anymore. So I think there's an interesting question there which you both raise about how much conformity is— whether you're ever going to achieve it, but how much is desirable, how much is— yeah, as a normative question there. But also for me, and I've had this conversation many times in different ways, that the tension between the structure, let's say the structure and the agency, just to kind of simplify it, the living, as you say, the living experience of of the student in the classroom versus the often decontextualized inert chunks of knowledge, skill, whatever predetermined learning outcome that is there. Some would argue that those things are, it's such a huge tension that actually it's never reconcilable because there is a fundamental difference between the kind of lived emergent reality of a life, that vitality, you know, a live child and a dead curriculum. Curriculum. Let's put it like that, just to, you know, put the cat amongst the pigeons and let's get some debate around that going.

The first point, can I make a couple of points here?

Of course, yes.

First one would be, you know, in relation to what you talked about Finland and the challenges of the society changing, and of course international schools are increasingly becoming schools that serve local populations rather than mobile expatriates. The point is a critical one, is that curriculum to me is forever and everywhere a local construct. So the point here is that, you know, schools talk about being IB, Cambridge, fieldwork-based, or Australian, or whatever it may be, Canadians. To me, that means they're using products and services and philosophies and values from particular providers, but they make sense of them in their local context. The syllabus is not the same as the program that the teacher teachers. And one of the things, you know, that good schools do with creative teacher professionalism is they interpret the syllabus in a way that makes it meaningful and engaging to students and personalizes it to a point as well, so that questions drive inquiry, you know. And again, I get really frustrated sometimes where people think you can't do this through academic disciplines. I mean, science, for example, is so rich, the social studies, so rich in rigorous forms of inquiry that students need to learn and then apply. To real local problems and situations. So I think there's a huge scope for developing powerful learning experiences that are engaging and enjoyable, both in disciplinary frameworks, and there's also a really important place for interdisciplinary understanding. So I think there's a tension, but we don't want a dead curriculum, so let's make it alive.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. We start discussing curriculum and we rapidly get to life and death. Exactly. I absolutely agree. We work in a series of organizations and we seek often a common definition around the world, but those series of organizations, whether it's states or in private sector or with greater autonomy or less autonomy, ultimately what we know to be true today is that there is often an institution that is a school, and that school is where the pragmatic realities of learning often take place. And we know that the last couple of years it's been exceptionally challenging physically to bring that institution to life. Within that school, the pragmatic realities are to define the truth. And the truth often comes from, in a successful school, a clear and agreed-to mission statement or shared vision. And that mission statement or shared vision defines what that school knows to be true, from the principal to every single parent of every single learner and every single teacher within. So that creation of a shared vision and mission statement, number one, enables a school to define its own reality, and it enables a school to define how important standards are with regard to a curriculum to its implementation versus perhaps the experience or the pedagogy. We often talk in the international school world about mission statements and have, have you defined your mission, when's your review for your mission statement, etc. It is critical, but you only realize it's critical when the, perhaps the misinformation or confusion takes place, when you take the rug from underneath people and they realize that there is no shared understanding of the dream. Then suddenly the question of standards and interpretation becomes more important. The organization defines its own reality, and the question about a live school, if you will, or a dead curriculum, I, I don't believe that to be true. I know that the, the IB do very well at it, and Cambridge also. Us in Fieldwork Education too, we review our curriculum on a cycle of review, and we do so with schools. So we're coming out of our, our latest review, over 100 schools spread around the world contributing to that, to be able to bring back in the field practice to the theory. What we often perhaps as a society get frustrated with is when in the field practice doesn't feed back into theory or rules, for example, and that makes us frustrated, particularly in, in democratic nations. But what we are trying to do is ensure that curriculum is live by bringing its practice into the theory.

Yeah, interesting. We've, we've got onto truth and reality as well as life and death, right? But I think I would take issue with the fact that schools are defining their reality. I think they think they're defining their reality. That's, I think that's another whole conversation cuz I think it's maybe controversial to say the value of the mission and vision statements are sometimes overemphasized. Because there is a fiction that it is reality and it's not. Well, I would say it's not. There's, I think there is a very, very diverse set of perspectives and emergent reality that is, it's like the culture in the environment is an emergent property of the interactions that go on in that organization, rather that it's not defined by a, a vision that's posted on the wall. And however much it's lived, it doesn't actually define the reality. I don't think that's maybe another another episode.

That is fair. I think for me that's more of a debate of authenticity rather than what a mission statement or a shared vision should be achieving. I think that's one more of authenticity, as if it's a box-ticking exercise, or actually that's a successful school implementation.

I think, I mean, I'd love to, if we can, just pick up on what you said, Tristan, about the local relevance. Just when you say local, how local do you mean by local? Local in, in the sense of you are working with frameworks that encompass countries all around the world in implementing in some fashion the Cambridge Framework or the fieldwork frameworks. How local in terms of an adaptation or relevance of that, those curriculum outcomes, the curriculum implementation, what would you say is a desirable level of local adaptation and relevance? While maintaining fidelity and, you know, some sense of unity or conformity around the intended vision of that framework?

I think it needs to be a very high level of localization. And how is that done? I mean, well, again, take a subject like science, the case studies, the investigation work should be dealing with local issues. You can often apply the standards to local context. You can certainly do that in the social studies, in languages. So to me, Again, it's one of the things that to me distinguishes a really good school from a less good school is the fact that they don't take the syllabus as a given. They don't just— they may use textbooks, they can be very valuable supporting, you know, learning resources, but they don't just follow the textbook. They apply and they think, and, you know, they are encouraging their teachers and learners to be creative professionals, you know, and develop and understand the curriculum in a contextual way relevant to their, to their local culture and context. Critical.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, Gregory?

Indeed critical, exceptionally challenging. We, we go back to that, that sense of perspective once again, but also to that, that definition of international. So, so context and local context, it can be permanent or it can indeed be a moving target. So to make something contextually applicable may be one of a context being transient. And as such, when we're talking about, for example, the definition of an international curriculum— well, curriculum we've been through quite length today— then, then I guess we talk about what international is. So if, if international is the concept of the exporting, the exporting of an identity outside of its jurisdiction, let's say for example a British international school or an American international school, you have that sense of international. You also have internationals being a multitude of nationalities. And then you've also got international as a mindset. As Tristan refers to earlier, we've seen a phenomenon in the last decade where international schools are now populated in the majority by local nationals. So they're seeking both the standards of implementation and curriculum as well as the ideology of being international. So, so when we think about, for example, role and of context. If in those three areas, the exporting of a national identity, if you will, or the multinational body, or the mindset, those, those three areas, well, there's going to be a different contextual answer. So for example, in, in the English national curriculum, to learn about Anglo-Saxons and Scots, for example, in primary, probably wouldn't be particularly applicable to the third cohort that I've just referred to, maybe not even the second cohort that I refer to. But if, if the intention is to reinforce a culture where you have identity types feeding back into that cultural model, then, then that may be the goal. And what Tristan, I believe, is articulating is it's the school's community that defines what that context is and that goal is, and, and then its interpretation and perspective of how to implement the tools that they are being provided from international agents. And that's what we try to do within our international curriculum. We essentially present frameworks and standards and, and provide a range for people to dip in and dip out of what's applicable. When we write content, so we go through that sort of planned and written approach, when we write content, we look at what is available in the local area rather than defining specific geographies, and we try and look at local culture wherever possible, because as we, as we look through international-mindedness and global competence, it's got to start at home, unless there is no— there would be no foundation for it. So So indeed, the local context is defined, and that doesn't necessarily mean geographically. That can be from that ideology type.

I mean, it's an interesting question, isn't it? What is the local context in an international school? Because many of them, for better or worse, are quite detached from their local context. And as you said, Tristan, earlier, increasingly less so, I would imagine, and I would hope actually personally. But I think it's an interesting one, just a question of what is the local. And there's also the question again, another big question, but this idea of international as a perspective, we get back to power relationship again, right? How much of that is a Western liberal perspective, right? How much of that is colonized by that? You know, there's a lot of discussion about decolonizing the curriculum, right? You know, there is that. I think that's an important question to ask and to try and understand what the undercurrents or, you know, the underlying biases or different perspectives that we need to acknowledge that say this is more important to learn than this, you know, because there are value judgments being made all the time. So it's, it's, I have no answer to that, but I think it's a phenomenally interesting and important question that goes to that heart of locally relevant curriculum.

Yeah, indeed. And when you look at this as a discussion, for example, we're holding this within the English language. We're influenced ourselves by literature which is accessible predominantly within the English language, published through medium and journals and literature which we consider to be respectful from a a certain influence. So there's no escaping that there is indeed an implicit values set.

So if we just end on this topic of evaluating the curriculum.

Yeah.

We're not, by that, we're not talking about the assessment of outcomes, student outcomes. We're talking about how successfully implemented is this curriculum framework in this context?

Correct. So to me, there are two essential questions when we evaluate the curriculum. They're both necessary to comprehend and understand the complex realities that surround the curriculum in the school to sharpen discussion and disentangle complexities. The first key question is, is the intended or planned curriculum logically coherent and do the parts fit well together? And if it's implemented, will it have a chance of producing the desired results? So there's a sort of logical coherence of the curriculum. Secondly, does the delivered curriculum match the intended? And this is critical because the values of teachers and parents are often different different from middle-aged school leaders like 3 of us. And there's no point in having a planned, uh, written curriculum that is incongruent with the values and, and lived realities of the school community. So you've got to bring the 2 together. And that's the, that's the role of curriculum evaluation. It's an ongoing dynamic dialectic between all aspects of the school community to make it, and it is, is essential. Good schools do it. Bad schools don't do it very well.

Yeah, I think in terms of the, the evaluation of a curriculum or an international curriculum, I think perhaps almost the most successful outcome or observation would be that it's difficult to observe the curriculum because it's permeated so well through the culture. As we talked about the symbiosis earlier, earlier today, and we talked about culture, so much is intangible to a school when you go through the written, the plans and curriculum. You have the experience and that experience is that element of truth. It is that element of the permanence within the learner. And if the curriculum is poorly constructed and implemented, that learner will have a terrible experience. If the curriculum is well planned, well written, well instructed and supported, almost the learner won't notice. And it's a bizarre, I guess, system. We're successful if we're below the radar because there is a wider culture of a learning experience within a school, and our role is one of humility to try and support that and to try and support those amazing practitioners around the world doing incredible things on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, brilliant. It's an interesting point, isn't it? And I would observe, you know, when you go in to do accreditation visits, as an example, you know, some people will look at the curriculum documents, but primarily what they're doing is soaking up the intangibles in the atmosphere and as you say, trying to feel and understand and participate in what's going on in that environment and how well integrated those elements are. They're not largely not looking at the curriculum documentation and ticking off whether there are these X number of boxes and filled in effectively. That would be a very narrow way to view what's going on. But I think coming back to where we started, just to take this definition of curriculum as often in people's minds the written curriculum that is such a narrow slice of what's actually going on with this hugely interesting question. So thank you very much, this has been fascinating.

Thank you.

Thanks for asking, Tim. It's been a great pleasure.

Good stuff.

Thanks, Tim, really appreciate it.

Good fun.

Thanks for your time also, Jason.

All right, cheers. Cheers, guys.

Bye-bye.

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