Rethinking Curriculum: Using the Knowledge Revival as an Evaluation Tool for School Leaders

In schools across the world, leaders are asking the same questions:

• Are our students really learning deeply?

• Does our curriculum prepare them for higher-order thinking, not just surface-level performance?

• Are we building equitable opportunities for all children, or are we unintentionally widening gaps?

A recent open-access book, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival (Surma, Vanhees, Wils, Nijlunsing, Crato, Hattie, Muijs, Rata, Wiliam & Kirschner, 2025), provides both the theoretical foundations and the practical insights to answer these questions. Written by an international team of leading scholars—including John Hattie, Dylan Wiliam, Paul Kirschner, and Elizabeth Rata—the book synthesises cognitive science, sociology, and curriculum theory to argue for a knowledge-rich curriculum as the essential pathway to deep thinking, equity, and democratic participation.

For school leaders, this work can be more than just an academic resource: it can function as a powerful evaluation tool for reviewing and redesigning curriculum provision.

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Why Knowledge Must Be the Starting Point

One of the central findings of the book is deceptively simple: skills do not develop in a vacuum. Critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and reading comprehension are not free-floating abilities that can be taught independently. They are domain-specific and depend on prior knowledge.

• Cognitive science evidence shows that working memory is limited to 4–7 items, while long-term memory has near limitless capacity. Experts in any field succeed because they can draw on stored knowledge to “chunk” information, freeing up cognitive space to solve problems.

• Educational implication: Without structured, cumulative knowledge, students cannot develop or transfer higher-order thinking skills.

For leaders, this means curriculum evaluation should begin by asking:

Does our curriculum provide students with the rich, sequenced knowledge they need to think deeply in each subject area? Or are we assuming they can develop critical thinking without content to think about?

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Prior Knowledge as the Engine of Equity

The research also highlights the role of prior knowledge in accelerating new learning. Students who bring extensive background knowledge to a lesson can integrate new ideas quickly; those who do not are left struggling.

This is where equity comes in:

• Relevant and activated prior knowledge enables faster learning, better retention, and more durable comprehension.

• Without it, students—particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds—cannot access complex texts or concepts, regardless of their innate potential.

For leaders, the evaluative question is:

Does our curriculum systematically build the background knowledge all students need, or does it leave some relying on what they bring from home?

If reading comprehension scores are stagnant, for example, leaders should not only look at phonics or strategy teaching but also at whether the curriculum gives students the “world knowledge” required to make sense of texts.

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Skills Are Domain-Specific – and Curriculum Must Reflect That

A striking finding from the book is the failure of generic skills instruction. Research on transfer (e.g., Gick & Holyoak, 1983) shows that students rarely apply a problem-solving strategy from one context to another unless they already recognise the content structure.

• A student trained in “critical thinking” in history will not automatically apply those skills to science.

• A curriculum that treats critical thinking as a general, teachable skill is therefore flawed.

For leaders, this should prompt a fundamental evaluation:

Does our curriculum try to teach skills generically, or does it embed them in subject-specific knowledge sequences?

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Reading Comprehension: The Case for Knowledge-Building

Perhaps the most practical section for leaders concerns reading comprehension. Decades of research show that:

• Students need to know 95–98% of the words in a text to fully comprehend it.

• Generic comprehension strategies (e.g., “find the main idea”) provide an initial boost but quickly plateau.

• The real driver of reading success is background knowledge.

For curriculum evaluation, leaders should therefore ask:

• Does our literacy strategy focus narrowly on decoding and comprehension strategies, or does it also build broad, subject-specific knowledge that underpins reading fluency?

• Do our reading texts reflect a coherent, knowledge-rich sequence, or are they chosen piecemeal for engagement?

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The Curriculum as a Pendulum

The book describes curriculum reform as a pendulum swing between knowledge-heavy and skills-heavy approaches. In many systems, the last few decades have tilted heavily toward skills, sometimes under the banner of “21st-century competencies.”

The danger is clear: when knowledge is sidelined, equity and attainment decline. OECD data shows that reading, science, and mathematics scores have stagnated or fallen in many nations, precisely as knowledge became less central in curricula.

For leaders, this insight can be reframed as an evaluation tool:

Where is our curriculum on the pendulum? Are we too far toward “skills” at the expense of knowledge, or have we achieved a balanced, knowledge-rich approach?

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Coherence, Clarity, and Content-Richness

The authors argue that a high-quality, knowledge-rich curriculum demonstrates three essential features:

1. Content-Richness – carefully selected, sequenced, and broad disciplinary knowledge.

2. Coherence – horizontal (across subjects), vertical (across years), and disciplinary (within subjects).

3. Clarity – clear, specific learning goals aligned to assessment.

For leaders, these features can be turned into evaluative prompts:

• Content: Is the knowledge we want students to learn explicitly defined, or left vague?

• Coherence: Do subjects connect to each other and build year-on-year progression?

• Clarity: Can teachers, students, and parents articulate what knowledge is being taught, and why?

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Knowledge as a Democratic Right

Finally, the research frames knowledge as more than a pedagogical issue: it is a democratic necessity. Shared knowledge gives citizens common frames of reference to understand debates, interpret media, and participate fully in society. Without it, disadvantaged groups remain excluded from public discourse.

For leaders, the evaluative lens becomes:

Is our curriculum giving every child—not just the privileged—access to the shared knowledge they need to thrive as citizens?

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A Framework for Leaders: Using the Knowledge Revival to Evaluate Curriculum

Based on the research, school leaders can use the following framework to audit their curriculum:

1. Knowledge Base: Does each subject provide structured, sequenced domain knowledge?

2. Equity: Does the curriculum close knowledge gaps, or does it assume background knowledge that some children may not have?

3. Skills Integration: Are skills taught within subject knowledge, not as generic add-ons?

4. Reading & Literacy: Are we building world knowledge to support comprehension?

5. Balance: Where are we on the knowledge–skills pendulum?

6. Curriculum Features: Do we have content-richness, coherence, and clarity?

7. Democracy & Citizenship: Does our curriculum prepare students to participate fully in society?

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Closing Reflection

Surma and colleagues (2025) provide leaders with both a warning and a roadmap. The warning is clear: focusing on generic skills without deep, structured knowledge has failed students in multiple nations. The roadmap is equally clear: a knowledge-rich curriculum is not conservative or old-fashioned—it is the foundation of equity, achievement, and democracy.

For school leaders, the challenge is to use these findings not just as inspiration, but as a practical evaluation tool. The questions you ask of your curriculum today—about knowledge, coherence, equity, and clarity—will shape whether your students can truly think deeply tomorrow.

Here is a link to the full research.