CCC: Cross-Curricular Correspondence

A commons where teachers find, tailor and share what works in class, starting with maths teachers in Zambia, the UK and New Zealand.

CCC is a commons for teaching knowledge of every kind: explanations, sequences, misconceptions, activities, local variants, and exchanges between classes. Teaching knowledge is farmed, not filed. It is useful to a new teacher on day one, tailored as it is used, and richer for every teacher who uses it. Maths teachers in Zambia, the UK and New Zealand are the first network; the space is meant to widen beyond them.

“Correspondence” means two things: a match between curricula, and teachers writing to each other across countries.

How it works

• The Sunday-night test. A tired teacher finds something usable in two minutes. Every other design choice has to pass this.
• Use, tailor, contribute. Contribution grows out of use: a tweak, a note such as “worked with a low-confidence Year 8 group”, or simply reusing something. No tagging and no forms.
• Propose, not rule. Use leaves signals, patterns are drawn from them, and suggestions are offered back. Nothing changes without a teacher choosing it.
• Paper first. Sessions run on printed cards and phone photos. No teacher has to use software.
• Class to class. A class makes something about its own world, such as a chart of a school day, and swaps it with a class abroad. Nothing with a name or a face leaves the room, and the teacher decides what is sent.

The sample project

How Zambia, the UK and New Zealand teach fractions. Teachers place each other’s example questions on their own sequence without seeing how the other side placed them. Agreement firms up a match; differences are kept. No curriculum is the master.

Principles

Emergent, not engineered. Variation is a feature. Low floor, high ceiling. The teachers who make the knowledge own it.

Where it comes from

Tikambilanie, which I founded, ran a class exchange between London and Lusaka in 2013. In 2019 I wrote a report on AI in education for UNESCO that proposed mapping between curricula and a paper route for schools without power.

Where it is now

In design, with a first class-exchange trial under discussion with a school in New Zealand.