Take the fear out of curriculum change

Although I like to think of myself as a young teacher, I have now been teaching for 20 years and have seen plenty of changes over that time. The Royal Society of Chemistry regularly receives feedback that teachers fear curriculum change, but there are ways of dealing with it confidently and with minimal disruption. Here are my top tips.

Remember core principles won’t change

No matter what happens in a curriculum review, the protons will still be in the nucleus, and electrons will still be lost, gained and shared. It’s easy to become anxious about potential changes, but the core concepts that make up chemistry will still form the bulk of the content. I was taught ionic bonding, equilibria and electrolysis 30 years ago when I took my school exams, and we can be confident that we’ll still be teaching them in another 30 years.

Strengthen your subject knowledge

Some curriculum changes involve concepts moving from a higher level. For example, in 2015, the new GCSE in England included mole calculations involving limiting reagents and an introduction to electrochemical cells – both of which had previously only been introduced at A-level. Strengthening your subject content knowledge, and consequently your pedagogical content knowledge, will make the transition to an updated syllabus easier.

Reading around the subject, attempting questions from more advanced qualifications and talking to other teachers will help you feel more confident with changes to the subject content. This can be more daunting if you are teaching out of your specialism and should be on heads of departments’ radars when planning for transition to a new curriculum.

Find a friend

Change is always easier when shared with others. During my first experience of curriculum change, I was aided by a very experienced teacher at a school a few miles away. They helped me build subject knowledge and gain perspective. We also co-created teaching resources together. As a fresh teacher at that point, it was incredibly helpful to have that guidance from someone who had been through it all before. Talk to the teachers in your networks who have experienced curriculum change before; if that’s you, connect with your colleagues going through it for the first time.

Take advantage of free CPD

As the timeline of curriculum change progresses, you will find that exam boards and other organisations will advertise a lot of CPD. Most of it will be free, so look out for online meetings from your exam board as well as local network meetings and sessions at national conferences. Many of these will be recorded and available on demand after the event. If you feel more confident about curriculum change, there may also be opportunities to contribute to curriculum working groups helping others to feel more prepared.

Save worrying about assessment for later

The biggest worry for teachers is often around the format of the final exams – understandable given the accountability pressure many schools feel. What kind of questions will be asked? How strict will the mark schemes be? This leads to a demand for sample assessment materials and adds to a general feeling of panic.

Any changes to the proportion of final exam and coursework or non-examined assessment will be communicated well in advance, so this is one thing you don’t need to worry about. Try not to let anxiety about the format of questions overwhelm your practice: for longstanding topics, very little will change. Even within an established exam series, it’s not always possible to know where the question setters will choose to be stricter and more lenient. To see that for yourself, compare the sample assessment materials from the last curriculum change with the papers that were in the previous series.

Overall, solid chemistry teaching with a strong emphasis on the foundations of the subject is the best defence against the fears and uncertainties of a new curriculum. Wishing us all good luck with our various curriculum reforms!