Designing a Curriculum for Learning, not Exams: Episode 2

These posts document my little journey of discovery when auditing and strengthening our A Level provision to enrich the course and challenge our more experienced students who have taken Media at GCSE. I'm also looking at developing our GCSE to make the most of our three year KS4.

In the last 'episode', I shared my hopes for A Level as well as my curriculum journey map. It really helped to work out where we could take the curriculum further when it came to extending and enriching the course, and I decided to do the same for our GCSE course.

However, when I started mapping across the three years, something really struck me: the repetition of the set texts. It's such an obvious thing, but we teach the key concepts in the context of the set texts. It's what is featured in the sample schemes of learning, and it is effective. But is it what we want for our enriched, wide reaching programme of study?

I am really fortunate to have some incredible teachers delivering our courses, all of whom are happy to step outside of their comfort zone and research content to suit the classes in front of them, as well as developing discussion and tasks to match. Knowing this, I felt confident in adapting schemes as I know staff will happily take on new texts and not feel too anxious stepping away from the set text list.

At present, we teach set texts and pin the key concepts to them. So, for example, we teach representation of gender (amongst other things) through looking at Tomb Raider, our video game cover set text. This means we spend longer on Tomb Raider, because we aren't just teaching the text. We are teaching examples of concepts that apply to multiple texts.

Now, this works, but there are some issues. Attaching the concepts to texts means students find it harder to transfer those ideas and apply them effectively to other texts. Often, they simply repeat the points made for TR whenever representation of gender is explored (leading to a conversation about why representation of gender isn't just sexualising women). It also means students face increased anxiety when approaching an 'unseen' text (something they have to do in the exam). But for me, the most significant issue is that some have no interest in application beyond the set texts. And what's the point in teaching Media Studies if students aren't leaving the course with an enhanced ability to decode the world around them, and interest in the process fo construction at all levels of communication?

So, this is my idea. It works because I am fortunate enough to have a three year KS4, but it could possibly work in a more condensed way for the first term of Y10 in a two year KS4. I am planning a foundation year for Y9, similar to art school, where they learn the key concepts and frameworks of Media, industry contexts, and practical skills. In this year, no key texts will be touched. We may look at another film in the franchise they will eventually be examined on, but only briefly. The aim is to provide a foundational understanding of Media as a whole, making approaching exam texts and looking at exam questions more straightforward because students have an increased confidence and don't need to be coached in concept, just text.

With this in mind, I set out to plan exactly what I wanted students to know as fundamental knowledge. What would help them approach a variety of texts and questions with reason and confidence? And how would that look in scheme of learning?

I decided to break terms down into concepts, and planned key questions and areas of exploration into each of these. What was key for me was that no area relied on a specific text. The point of this foundation year would be to give a holistic overview of the media, its issues and its concepts, rather than stick to specific texts or examples. These could change year on year, but the conceptual framework would remain the same.

In addition, I wanted to cover aspects of history, albeit briefly, in order to help contextualise any texts studied. This would allow for a greater understanding of texts in their zeitgeist, but also provide a good foundation for exploring genre or form history as enrichment at A Level. It would also hopefully allow students to consider contemporaries of texts and lead them to become more confident in independent contextual research.

The aim would be that, by the end of Y9, students were confident in concepts and contexts, and could write about a media text generally. They would also have been exposed to practical opportunities in every term and had an independent practical challenge in the final term, meaning coursework would also take less explicit teaching and hopefully require less management and support. This, coupled with less time spent going through the set texts, would mitigate the time spent teaching the foundation year and be more time efficient overall.

This does have its limitations. Y9 students are too young to explore some of the more mature subject matter and texts that exemplify it, so this will have to be factored in. Overall, though, I think it will allow us a bit of creative freedom when it comes to teaching Media, and will hopefully create more rounded and confident students at GCSE.

This is my plan and rationale so far, with some texts mentioned as possibilities for use this year. Now I have this and the A Level map in place, I am in a position to start mid term planning and developing resources for actual teaching. My faculty has been working hard on utilising evidence based approaches, and I'm excited to start incorporating and adapting them for Media schemes.

If you have any suggestions for how to improve this then please let me know. I am always open to improving and refining teaching materials and pedagogy. It's how we improve, after all!