Most members of UGEAN have participated in this major research project.

Since the publication of Successful Futures (Donaldson, 2015) and the subsequent adoption of its recommendations in A curriculum for Wales – a curriculum for life (Welsh Government, 2015), a national strategy has been underway to build new curriculum, pedagogy and assessment arrangements to offer young people in Wales educational experiences that are fit for the 21st century. The creation of these new arrangements is the responsibility of all involved in education in Wales – communities, policy makers, practitioners and researchers. 

The CAMAU project, a collaboration between the University of Glasgow (UofG) and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD), funded by the Welsh Government and the UWTSD, is designed to support the Welsh education system in this task. The focus of the CAMAU project is progression. CAMAU aims to provide evidence from research, policy and practice to address five main questions: 

  • How might curriculum, progression and assessment be described and developed in Wales to focus on learning and to promote better alignment between research, policy and practice?  
  • In what ways do models of curriculum progression relate to progression in learning emerging from evidence of learning and progression within schools and classrooms? 
  • To what extent is it possible to think of assessment as the use of evidence to enable future learning, as ‘progression steps’, rather than as a summary of past achievement? 
  • What implications arise from the CAMAU work with AoLE groups that will be essential to consider in the next phases of the programme (i.e. implications for professional learning)? 
  • What implications arise from this exploratory partnership project for research, policy and practice in Wales and beyond? 

The Welsh Government established a network of Pioneer schools, teachers from which are working in national groups related to each of the six Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLEs) – Expressive Arts; Health and Well-being; Humanities; Languages, Literacy and Communication; Mathematics and Numeracy; and Science and Technology – to identify what matters in each of the six AoLEs and how progress might best be described and discerned within each AoLE.  

CAMAU has been working with the six AoLE groups of teachers, researchers and policy makers to bring together evidence from  

  • research on progression,  
  • national and international policy on progression and  
  • empirically derived understandings of progression in classrooms  

to explore how progression might best be described and developed in relation to these six curricular areas of learning and experience. The project also investigates how progression steps might be most helpfully identified, described and used to support future learning. 

The CAMAU project has already had a major influence on the structure and development of the new Curriculum for Wales:  

  • CAMAU researchers analysed and synthesised existing research with findings from new research developed by the team regarding:  
    • the construct of progression;  
    • progression as conceptualised in Welsh policy;  
    • research evidence of progression in different curricular areas;  
    • structures and descriptions of progression in other countries’ curriculum frameworks;  
    • Welsh teachers’ insights from professional experience into progression. 
  • CAMAU researchers explored and developed alternative ways of mediating research to policy-makers and practitioners and employed these within the AoLE groups. 
  • CAMAU reported in depth on these matters to the Welsh Government in April 2018 (see ‘Related publications’ at https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/education/research/currentresearchprojects/camauprogressionandassessmentinthecurriculumforwales/#/relatedpublications)
  • The structure adopted within the Welsh curriculum in terms of broad descriptions of learning development (from beginning learner to expert) rather than as statements of predetermined standards reflects the initial CAMAU research reported to the Welsh Government. 
  • CAMAU team members have contributed through their reviews of research and international practice to the development of the ‘what matters’ statements which structure each of the six areas of learning and experience. 
  • Curricular documentation, structured in these ways, is now being finalised for publication and engagement with teachers across Wales in April 2019 

In the current phase of the project, CAMAU researchers are gathering information from young people, teachers and policy makers to deepen our understanding of the processes of change and widening the empirical evidence base for our understanding of progression in each area of the curriculum.  When this evidence has been collected and analysed, the CAMAU team will share feedback from teachers and children and young people with the Welsh Government to inform further development of the curriculum. 

First published: 20 August 2019

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