Reflections on the Core and the Hinterland: The Balancing Act of Curriculum Design

16/05/2021

If you get the pun, then I salute you as a fellow WJEC teaching champion! Although, Mathias is pulling the face I sometimes pull when faced with the mountain of knowledge we must impart...

I've read a few blogs posts over the last few weeks about curriculum design: it's a natural part of the process when redesigning and developing units and schemes of learning. The concept of the core and hinterland has become a theme in my reading, and I wanted to write my reflections down to organise my thoughts and consider these ideas in my context.

The balancing act of core and hinterland knowledge is a logical one, and one that supports a knowledge rich curriculum that enhances student understanding of the core through the support and enrichment of the hinterland: something we strive for in our classrooms. And yet, it can feel, at times, that the nature of the curriculum we teach is one that simply doesn't leave room for that.

While developing the enriched curriculum for Media, I have often come across this exact conundrum. The sheer volume of core knowledge needed for the examinations means it is all too easy to forget about the hinterland. I know many teachers have commented on resorting to photocopying the guidance for teaching and handing it out to students to learn. Direct core knowledge impartation at its finest, and certainly something that reduces risk when time is short and the qualification is new and as dense at the Media one dares to be.

However, the importance of the hinterland knowledge in Media and Film cannot be overstated. When studying a subject as embroiled in social and cultural context as these, knowledge of the zeitgeist elevates understanding to a whole new level. It's one thing to know some classic horror genre codes from a list and watch the set film, for example, but a knowledge of the history and significance of the genre, including key texts, directors and current innovations, can massively impact depth of understanding and also critically evaluate the impact of such codes and choices. It can allow students to identify instances of intertextuality with ease; reference politically, culturally or socially motivated choices in media texts and understand the production process in context. There are so many other benefits, but these alone make it a game changer.

Hinterland knowledge often takes the form of anecdotes in other subjects, and can be the case in Media and Film too, but often the hinterland takes the form of historical snapshots or extracts from additional texts. It can be daunting, as a teacher, to wade through the vast media landscape to compile such texts, select appropriate ones with the limited contact time we have, and be up to date and confident in our own knowledge enough to keep up to date and use texts as new as articles from the very same morning of lesson delivery. The fact it isn't strictly necessary to achieve examination success is another factor that makes it seem unappealing, especially when time is so precious. However, this is one of those curriculum decisions that involves paying in a bit and reaping the much greater rewards later down the line, because the enhanced understanding students have can then be applied to other texts, and the core teaching becomes less repetitious and laborious. Seeing genre codes in action can foster a greater understanding than reading and rereading a theoretical summary, and while theory is an essential part of the qualification and, indeed, the academic field as a whole, it is only through observing media texts and production in action that these theories were even conceptualised. Therefore, it seems only fitting that our students should be able to craw upon the same 'raw materials' as these theorists in order to truly critically engage with the theories themselves. It's a lot easier to develop a point of view when you have first hand experience.

Now, I will admit, this is something that I was hesitant to do when I first started teaching the A Level. I was fairly new to teaching, new to the qualification, and I was solely focused on ensuring the students were not going to lose out in any way because of my verdant nature. This meant a lot of core knowledge and core text study: attempting to account for every possible aspect of every question that could come up and covering it thoroughly. I was in a constant state of mild panic and tension, in case I forgot how much a specific aspect of production cost, or the entire back catalogue of the directors, or every possible text that could come up for the unseen question (in hindsight, the nature of the question, by definition, should have been a giveaway that I needed to chill out a bit). It made for intense lessons, lots of 'fact dumping' and subsequently lots of direct repetition when the copious terms, theories and facts were inevitably not absorbed by the brains of sixth formers that I wished would just be sponges and make my life easier. It yielded some success, but it was very hard work and not massively enjoyable. I can imagine lots of teachers new to A Level might do the same thing: stick rigidly to the bullet point breakdown and texts in the specification and consider that to be the bible they live by. Sometimes, I still do that. There's nothing wrong with that at times, and it most definitely has it's place in curriculum planning. The core is the core, after all.

But A Level is more than pushing yourself over the finish line to get to that next stage in your education. A Level study is about broadening your horizons and enriching your education; it's about finding your passion and your path in life beyond the school you have grown and matured in; it's about exploring your options and giving yourself knowledge to fuel your curiosity and get you excited about learning. It's, in my opinion, the toughest point in your undergraduate education career, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Over the last few years, the curriculum reforms mean that this has been sidelined somewhat to focus on recruitment for specific graduate shortages, traditionalist movements and an increasing pressure to scrap the arts from the curriculum entirely. This has led to tough reforms and qualifications that are barely recognisable from those taught ten years ago, though we should feel lucky, in this climate, that we have any at all. But we are the messengers. We deliver this content. And, while others decide the core, we can enrich with the hinterland. It is where we find ourselves most liberated as educators; where we can enrich our students' academic careers with cultural knowledge for life, both historical and contemporary.

All these thoughts, then, come back to little old me sat at my laptop typing away on a sunny Sunday morning, next to a piece of A3 covered in a sprawling spider diagram of what will become the strengthened AS. The last few months have really got me thinking about the scholars I want to produce at the end of their time in a Media or Film classroom, and something that came back to me time and time again was an appreciation of quality texts and how they fit into wider society, as well as what these texts, therefore, say about their zeitgeist. Knowing this would allow students to apply their skills to any text they came across in an informed, critical manner, which is the height of the media literacy we need to foster in today's society. even more than that, it develops a cultural literacy and understanding of cultural heritage. This would be a quality Media education. Exam boards may not be able to offer it straight out of the tin, but we can use what they give us and elevate it, like taking a Pot Noodle and adding your own bespoke spice blend.

Feeling invigorated and excited about the curriculum challenges and opportunities to come, I shall now return to my spider diagram of core and hinterland. This is all a bit of a brain dump and a ramble, but I wanted to document my thought process and rationale behind my inclusion of extra content and the benefits it can bring. A very brief overview style example of an exam section planned in this way is on my previous post, using the sand timer diagram. As I write more and in more detail, I'd be happy to share and get any feedback on how it could further be refined. I hope to update in a few months when I am teaching the new sixth form cohort and reflect on how successful this has all been. For now, the hinterland calls.

Not the TV show. That's core. But Line of Duty on the other hand...

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