Substantive and disciplinary knowledge: what does it mean for Languages?

In 2021 Ofsted began publishing a series of curriculum research reviews.  The Languages Curriculum Research Review (Languages OCRR) was the fourth in the series, and was published in June 2021.

The first in the series was Science, which came out in April 2021.  It featured substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge.  This is an excerpt from the Science OCRR:

The terms also appear in the OCRRs for History, Geography and RE, while disciplinary knowledge only is mentioned in the OCRRs for Art and Design, and English.  There no mentions in the OCRRs for Computing, PE, Maths, Music or Languages.

These terms appear to be replacing the "knowing more and remembering more" maxim.  I have found out this week that it has permeated into other subjects, and I have heard anecdotally that it has come up in some recent Ofsted inspections.  Schools have already rewritten their curricula to accommodate the "3 Is" (Intent, Implementation and Impact), language teachers have had to factor in the 3 Pillars (Vocabulary, Grammar and Phonics), and schools are now being encouraged to revisit their curricula and reframe them in terms of substantive and disciplinary knowledge.  We will all need to think about what substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge look like in our subject.  

So what are substantive and disciplinary knowledge in Languages?

Christie Counsell, in her article Taking curriculum seriously, says that "Substantive knowledge is the content that teachers teach as established fact".  Disciplinary knowledge, on the other hand, "is a curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists or professional practice."

She then goes on to say that "This substantive-disciplinary distinction works to differing extents and in very different ways across subjects. The disciplinary dimension is barely relevant, for example, in school-level modern languages."  It is possible that this may support its omission from the Languages OCRR.

Despite this, a Google search for "disciplinary knowledge in languages" reveals that a number of schools have already rewritten their subject paperwork to include mention of substantive and disciplinary knowledge, and it is clear that they have interpreted the two kinds of knowledge in a number of different ways.

I've been reading around the subject, and have put together a list of bullet points for each type of knowledge:

Substantive knowledge	Disciplinary knowledge
Teacher input Focus on meaning Vocabulary Grammar Phonics The content that is to be learned Carefully chosen and sequenced factual content The facts Rules and methods “Knowing what”	Learner output The big ideas Thinking like a linguist Thinking like a French/Spanish/German speaker Practising the language Using the language creatively Asking questions Planning Evaluating Presenting Problem-solving Critical thinking Choosing and selecting Making connections “Knowing how to”

To put that into some context, I'll use a series of lessons I've recently completed with some Year 4 (age 8-9) beginners in French.  The substantive knowledge that I taught them was 10 animals with the indefinite article, including the phonemes in each word.  Then I taught them the difference between masculine and feminine nouns, and how to use the indefinite article to differentiate between the two.  Finally, as per the scheme of work we are using, I taught them je suis, which enabled us to practise short sentences such as Je suis un oiseau. and Je suis une souris.  I then wanted the children to take what they had learned and to apply it in their own work.  I gave them a bilingual glossary with many more animal words, and asked them to use their knowledge to write je suis sentences, and work out the correct indefinite article for each animal.  For this task they called on their disciplinary knowledge, applying the rules they had learned to solve a problem.

This shows how important it is to build into our schemes of work frequent opportunities for the children to demonstrate what they have learned, to be creative with the language, to "think like a linguist".

How does this picture of substantive and disciplinary knowledge fit in with yours?  All constructive comments welcome!

Finally, many thanks to Dr Gianfranco Conti for pointing out the similarities here with Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, which was a great help for me in getting my thoughts in order.