Written by Richard Bustin, What are we Teaching? discusses the importance of having a subject-based curriculum in schools and explores the responsibility that teachers, through their subject specialisms, have to help ensure this is achieved. 

What are we Teaching? moves ideas beyond the traditional vs progressive debates that have dominated education discourse. Teachers are burdened by the overarching emphasis on exam performance at the expense of the broader benefits of teaching their subject, expressed here as capabilities. This book suggests that subjects are key to enabling young people to develop the powerful knowledge needed to flourish in a complex modern world. 

Part one introduces the key theories on which the book is based, including different ways of making sense of knowledge, skills and values in the curriculum, powerful knowledge and educational capabilities. What are we Teaching? is research-based, using voices of real teachers who engaged with the question ‘what makes your subject a powerful knowledge for young people’, and it is their testimonies that provide a provocation for each chapter in section two which focus on different subject areas. The final part offers advice on building a powerful knowledge, capabilities curriculum in schools.

Essential reading for teachers, senior and subject leaders and curriculum coordinators.