Matthew Moss is a suburban high school located in Rochdale, U.K. It serves nearly 900 students, 25% of which qualify for free school meals. Matthew Moss High School is noteworthy for its use of the My World curriculum, developed to give students meaningful learning power and agency, and to equip them with the skills, dispositions, and values they need in order to engage positively with the unknown challenges of the future. In addition, Matthew Moss is changing the way teachers teach, the way resources are managed, and the way learning is “captured.”

Discovering “My World”

All year 7 and 8 learners (360 young people, ages 11-13) take part in the My World curriculum at Matthew Moss, which occupies more than one day per week throughout the school year. My World replaces conventional “subject-based curriculum” based on predetermined content, instead presenting multidisciplinary “challenges” that culminate in a public exhibition of learning to which the local community is invited. These “challenges” include launching an egg as high as possible and returning it to earth without allowing it to break, responding to a natural disaster, investigating a student’s family’s history of migration, and pursuing an enquiry provoked by a personally meaningful object.

Transforming Pedagogy

At Matthew Moss, the traditional role of “teacher”–long established as the center of agency within the classroom–is being replaced by the new professionalism of the “pedagogue”–the adult who skilfully creates the conditions for learning through mentoring, coaching, provoking, scrutinizing, and co-constructing the learning experience with the student.

Devolving Control of Resources

Learners at Matthew Moss are afforded the agency to organize their own resourcing, including ordering materials and equipment directly from suppliers using the school’s procurement systems, and using these materials to design and build physical artifacts.

New Ways to Capture Learning

Matthew Moss students and teachers are using video to capture learning and aid reflection on the learning journey. The Effective Life-Long Learning Inventory (ELLI) is used by learners, and Matthew Moss is beginning to use blogs and forums as tools for learning and reflection, and to use YouTube as a portal for the exhibition of learning.Read More