Thinking & Curriculum
Thinking & Curriculum
At this stage, I am particularly interested in curriculum coherence, teacher sensemaking, and the gap between intended design and lived classroom experience. These interests have developed through practice across different school contexts and are now being sharpened through further study and reflection.
Curriculum coherence is not only a problem of design. It is also a problem of interpretation.
Curriculum coherence is often discussed in terms of alignment between standards, units, and assessment. In practice, however, coherence appears less stable. It depends on how teachers interpret curriculum intent, how they prioritise content, and how they make connections over time.
There is often an assumption that curriculum moves from design to implementation in a relatively straightforward way. My experience suggests otherwise. Teachers inevitably interpret and adapt curriculum in response to context, students, and constraints. This makes interpretation central to how curriculum is experienced.
A key factor in curriculum enactment is how teachers make sense of what they are teaching. This includes how they understand the purpose of content, how they interpret progression, and how they connect individual lessons into a wider narrative. From this perspective, curriculum development is not only about designing materials, but about supporting shared understanding.
My current thinking is shaped by a number of ongoing questions:
How is curriculum coherence understood differently across a school?
To what extent can coherence be deliberately designed, rather than emerging through practice?
What role do leaders play in shaping how curriculum is interpreted?
How do teachers navigate the tension between formal frameworks and classroom realities?
These questions are shaping both my current practice and the direction of my ongoing study.