We often talk about challenge as if it is a clear idea that everyone understands; my experience is rather different. Its definition alludes us. For this reason, over the course of three articles I want to set out a definition that is deep enough to have durability but flexible enough to be used as a basis for all curriculum design work.
Challenge as architecture
We do not think deeply enough about the meaning of challenge. It is common to find articles about challenge citing research from cognitive science such as Bjork’s theory of desirable difficulties (2020) or Sweller’s cognitive load theory (Lovell, 2020; Sweller et al, 2011); sometimes Dweck’s work on growth mindset too (Dweck, 2016).
People will cite retrieval practice as being a good example of challenge. Some use a Vygostkian lens to shape their understanding of challenge and have described it as “productive struggle”, where learning is not in the comfort zone or the panic zone but pitched “just right” (I will explore this further in the third article in this series).
I do not claim that any of the research cited to support conceptualisations of challenge is wrong or misguided. Far from it. I am simply saying that we are too focused on the form that challenge takes in lesson time; we are obsessed with observable evidence of challenge happening rather than thinking more deeply about the essence of it.
By spending our time dreaming up new and inventive ways of adding challenge to the curriculum and scurrying around for a research base to support it, we are acting like someone who is desperate to redecorate their house at each new change of fashion. The interiors get a spruce up – nice wallpaper and a new lamp – while the foundations of the building decay without anyone knowing.
And yet, when we look at the inside of the house, we shake hands and say we are finished – our implementation of challenge is complete. At least, until the fashion trends change again. All the while, there is a leak in the roof and tiles have fallen off.
We need to stop tinkering with the interiors of the curriculum “house” we have built. We must go back to the blueprint – the architecture of our plans – to make sense of the essence of challenge.
Challenge is not something that is “added afterwards” and reimplemented every time there is a new trend. Challenge sits at the very heart of our curriculum architecture.
The idea of “architecture” in explaining the essence of challenge is a powerful one. The essence of challenge is like the intricate, detailed map of knowledge for where learning should go and how it should get there.
The essence of challenge is the precise dimensions and measurements, systems and relationships between the concepts, knowledge, skills and understanding within a subject towards the overall goal.
It might be tweaked, changed, and developed as time goes by but it still envisions what the best could be, pointing students towards the overall goal of the curriculum.
When studied well and understood deeply, it is the mental map a teacher holds of where the end goal is for a unit of work, for the end of the year, for a piece of writing, for mastery of a concept in mathematics, for a beautiful piece of artwork, and for what catching and throwing means for every student.
There are not multiple maps of challenge for each lesson; instead, there is one map, for each subject, that builds upon strong foundations over several floors. And each map for each subject sits within a vast complex array of other maps of other subjects. Teachers know when the maps might overlap, crossover and interlock. They open doors to understanding at each point and plan for them accordingly.
Like the architectural drawings of a building, the essence of challenge is indispensable to the planning of the curriculum. The form it takes can vary from unit of work to unit of work, from lesson to lesson, from classroom to classroom. But it will remain reasonably true to the plans and the mapping that was done long before students entered the room ready to learn.
If we don’t begin with the essence of challenge, it is doomed to be the Next Big Thing, churning round and round in a range of new packaging each time, instead of something that is central to all we do.
In the spirit of the metaphor, I want to suggest four “floors” to the architectural plans of challenge to support those responsible for subject leaders and teachers who are developing their curriculum plans.
Foundations: Key concepts in each subject
The foundations of all curriculum planning has to be the underpinning concepts and themes that lie at the heart of the essence of the subject. English is not maths; history is not geography. Some subjects will overlap more than others, of course, but each subject has its own rich traditions, scholarship and ideas. It is crucial that students are able to see the boundary lines of each subject with absolute clarity if they are to make progress in their learning in each.
The best way to do this is to root all curriculum design in the key concepts of each subject. The word concept can be seen as a highly ambiguous term but it does not have to be that way. Concepts are simply the “big ideas” of each subject on which all other knowledge hangs.
By designing curriculum around concepts in each subject, we can support student development of schema in long-term memory as each time they add new knowledge to their understanding, teachers can point them to the relevant big idea that underpins the new learning and how this new knowledge relates to what they already know.
In other words, students can better organise their learning in each subject around concepts, making it easier for them to remember what they learn in units of work or in individual lessons.
This also aids the teacher’s curriculum planning. If the key concepts are the biggest and grandest ideas of that subject and they lie at the heart of what goes on in the learning, teachers will naturally have to choose the most powerful knowledge possible to aid deep understanding, as they know where the boundaries of each subject lie and what to choose for their lesson content.
If what they want to teach falls beyond the bounds of the concepts that the curriculum is designed around, it probably will not be worth spending time on since it will not contribute to their students deepening their learning in this subject as part of the overall narrative of the curriculum.
Concepts in practice: History
When the primary curriculum is organised around concepts like cause and effect, change and consequence, chronology and significance, all other learning, across a range of time periods and civilisations can ask deep and searching questions about the people, places and things of that time. This builds in challenge at the source of the history curriculum.
Asking these questions in increasingly complex ways as students progress through their history curriculum ensures students are constantly deepening their knowledge of history as a subject and as a discipline, and in turn they develop themselves as historians.
For example: How significant were the achievements of the ________? This can be asked of Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Vikings and so on. Students can compare and contrast their answers to this question across several years.
Understanding the answer to questions like this draws in a huge amount of substantive and disciplinary knowledge that has to be grappled with at a conceptual and practical level.
Students need to go back and forth across time periods to truly understand how important achievements were and even compare them to modern times. A simple but powerful question, rooted in the concepts that transcend the subject. This sort of question can’t be asked if a curriculum is not designed around these ideas.
Concepts in practice: English
English is a particularly complex subject to organise around concepts due to it being so vast and spanning such a breadth of knowledge across several subject disciplines. However, it can be done.
The best way to explain it is by talking about two conceptual “ropes”. One rope is reading for meaning; the other is writing for purpose. Although they are separate ropes, they have a common purpose that is simply expressed as enabling every student to communicate effectively in written and verbal form.
The key conceptual rope of reading for meaning can be explained in the simple statement that when we read, we read to understand and comprehend the meaning of black squiggles on a white page.
The squiggles, or letters, are not ends in themselves. They are the writer’s attempt to convey meaning coherently across sentences, paragraphs and chapters. As students leave primary education, if they have not grasped that every letter, sound and word, rooted in sentences, paragraphs and chapters, is not trying to express something that cannot be expressed simply by observation, or through talking, then they have missed the reason for reading.
The conceptual rope of writing for purpose runs parallel to reading for meaning and can be simply explained as the understanding that when we write, there is always a reason. The three most common are to entertain, inform and persuade. Like reading for meaning, the words and phrases, rooted in sentences and paragraphs that our students write are not purposeless; they are trying to say something about the world as it is, or as it ought to be, if it is a non-fiction trying to persuade or describe. And if it is fiction, these words are trying to furnish the imaginations of others, or maybe more fully understand their own.
The idea of these two concepts being “ropes” is important. Ropes are made up of strands. These strands are woven together tightly to form the overall structure in various ways in accordance with how the rope is going to be used.
If one of the strands is frayed, poorly formed, or even missed out, the whole rope will struggle to achieve its purpose. Like strands, there are many “sub-concepts” that are woven tightly together as part of the broader concept of reading for meaning or writing for purpose.
When mapping a curriculum, these should be identified carefully, making sure that as they are woven together, they are integrated correctly throughout units of work.
I write more about this approach to reading in the primary school in my recent in-depth Best Practice Focus download for Headteacher Update (Burns, 2022).
Next time
My next article, which you can find here, on the architecture of challenge will consider the ground floor of progressively sequenced knowledge and the first floor of units of learning that retrieve, apply and transfer knowledge across a range of domains.
Robbie Burns is a teacher and assistant vice-principal for teaching and learning at Bede Academy in Northumberland. He has written for a range of publications on primary education and curriculum. Read his blog via www.howthenshouldweteach.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @MrRRBurns. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/robbie-burns
Further information & references
- Bjork & Bjork: Desirable difficulties in theory and practice, Journal of Applied research in Memory and Cognition (9,4), 2020.
- Burns: Every child a reader: Whole-school reading strategies, Best Practice Focus 7, Headteacher Update, 2022.
- Dweck: Mindset: The new psychology of success, Ballantine Books, 2016.
- Lovell: Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action, John Catt Educational, 2020.
- Sweller, Ayres & Klayuga: Cognitive Load Theory. Vol 1. Springer, 2011.