Product reviews for Uncharted Territories

I know when I open the annual envelope from Crown House Publishing containing their catalogue that something thought-provoking will emerge. At its best, Crown House takes us into a world of creative approaches to curriculum and pedagogy, designed to nurture children's imagination, responses and knowledge in powerful ways that seek to release us from, or help us see beyond, some of the mundane routines of everyday education. This could not be more true of one of their most recent books, Uncharted Territories.

Debra Kidd and Hywel Roberts, authors of the book, are well-known for their deeply humane, child-centred, imagination-centred, response-centred pedagogies, a reaction against the rigidities of current curricular and institutional tendencies. Inspired by their training in drama under Dorothy Heathcote and their many years of experience in education, and profoundly critical of the ways in which teachers and students have been disempowered in the status quo, they seek to activate the creativity of both, and to cast them as independent and powerful agents in the world of knowledge. (And, by the way, if you haven't encountered Debra Kidd's wonderful blog -˜Love Learning', or her fantastic book Teaching: Notes from the Frontline (also published by Crown House), then do investigate them straight away.)

Designed for both primary and secondary teachers, Uncharted Territories is both an enjoyable read and a stimulating one. In the form of a metaphorical journey around an imaginary world, it sets out a model for learning across the curriculum based on narrative exploration. Each of the ten chapters guides us - accompanied by a delightful fold-out map and illustrations - through a different location in this world: a forest, a castle, a graveyard, a mountain, a ship, the universe, a wasteland, a zoo, a cave, and a theme park. Along the way, each chapter points out -˜landmarks', -˜stopovers' and -˜stepping stones' - a range of ways in which these landscapes might stimulate learning in different subject areas. Each chapter concludes by taking us to the -˜bedrock' of each location - a short -˜debrief' on the -˜theoretical and academic underpinning' of the learning described in the chapter.

Uncharted Territories can be read as a series of units of work, as a stimulus for creative classroom practice, as a blueprint for curricular and cross-curricular innovation, or as a philosophical journey into the heart of learning - or all four. Whichever of these we take from it, It is valuable for the ways in which it inspires us to think differently about and imagine more richly the world of the classroom. Cynics may find some of its language and ideas naïve, but its passion, intelligence and creative spirit shine through and illuminate some of the darker alleyways of our school system as well as some of the exciting alternative paths that we might take. At the very least, it would be a wonderful stimulus for a department discussion. Highly recommended.