Varieties of curricular experience: backmarkers and frontrunners in the primary classroom

In the first study a class of 10-year-olds was observed for the first and last five weeks of the autumn term. On both a class and individual child basis there was considerable difference between teacher-believed and child-actual timetables, and this increased over the term. In the second study, 53 children were classified into "frontrunners" or "backmarkers", depending on success in pacing the taught curriculum. For backmarkers, strategies for maintaining contact were mainly child-determined, though for frontrunners mainly teacher-determined. Although the teachers, who proved to be traditionally directive, believed their paper timetable closely represented children's true classroom experience, a picture emerged of most children correctly perceiving themselves as backmarkers, and as having responsibility for instigating their own, largely passive, coping strategies with subsequent negative feelings about themselves and their situation.