Curriculum Review Northern Ireland

The findings of an independent review of the Northern Irish Curriculum have been recently published.

The review recommends the development of a new curriculum which is purpose-led, knowledge-rich, continuous and coherent, specified and focused and inclusive and flexible.

In its recommendations about a new curriculum framework the review draws on the work of a number of geographers including David Mitchell and Richard Bustin’s respective work on geography, powerful knowledge and how it can develop young people’s ‘capabilities’ to ‘think about themselves in the world, and about the changing relationship human beings have with the environment’ and to have a disposition to take ‘environmental and global responsibility’.

It also cites David Lambert’s work on the importance of subject disciplines and how their ‘very origin was to question orthodoxies and sometimes superstitions about how the world works: the sciences, geography, history (and other subject specialisms) have developed through focussing analytical and critical thought. They have developed distinctive perspectives, methods and ways of thinking’.

The review’s full findings can be read here which include the development of a Curriculum Taskforce to be led by Christine Counsell.