The Australian curriculum : implications for teaching and assessment

Teachers will be aware of the raft of educational changes introduced recently and also of the associated challenges and opportunities that such educational reforms present. This PETAA Paper commences with an overview of the major educational changes and how they impinge on teachers’ classroom practice in the teaching of English and makes explicit the implications for policy support. This article aims to provide teachers with some insight into how they might respond in their teaching to develop their own assessment and pedagogic practices and in so doing support students to improve in their learning and to achieve higher standards. A group of teachers’ classroom practice, which has applicability to both Upper Primary and Middle School English teaching, is analysed to demonstrate how these teachers have pedagogically incorporated some of the ‘general capabilities’ and a cross-curriculum priority of ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’ into their classroom practice.

History in the Australian Curriculum F-10: Providing answers without asking questions

Thi paper writer examines the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum: History F-10. It does so in two ways. First, it explores some of the strengths and weaknesses of this curriculum with reference to the decision to frame aspects of Australian history within the context of a world history approach. Whilst the positioning of Indigenous Histories is applauded, the curriculum’s lack of attention to the significance of the recent history of Australia’s Asian neighbours, and Australia’s relationship with them, is critiqued. This part of the paper also emphasises the need for comparative approaches and calls for greater emphasis on providing students with opportunities to critique and contest the construction of narratives about the past. Second, the paper introduces four invited articles that examine different aspects of the Australian Curriculum: History. Collectively these papers reiterate the significance of the richness of integrated and child-centred approaches and the importance of developing historical thinking, empathy and the historical imagination in the classroom.

A model for curricula integration using the Australian curriculum

Targeting students’ learning is at the centre of education. In addition, education is promoted as a solution on various issues; consequently educators seek ways for teachers to address societal needs, students’ learning needs, and the overcrowded curriculum. There are definition debates and issues around integrating curricula. However, the rationale for primary students undertaking curricula integrated learning can provide motivation for primary teachers to devise and implement curricula integrated lessons in the classroom. More exploration is required to present models for the practical implementation of curricula integration. This paper provides practical ideas for curricula integration that focus on combining achievement standards from the Australian Curriculum: Science and other key learning areas.

Forging the heteroglossic citizen : articulating local, national, regional and global horizons in the Australian Curriculum

This article offers a discourse analysis comparing selected articles in the national press over the consultative period for Phase 1 subjects in the new Australian Curriculum, with rationales prefacing official Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority documents. It traces how various versions of Australia, its ‘nation-ness’ and its future citizens have been taken up in the final product. The analysis uses Lemke's analytic elaboration of Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia and its derivative, intertextuality. It identifies a range of intertextual thematic formations around ‘nation’, ‘history’, ‘citizen’ and ‘curriculum’ circulating in the public debates, then traces their presence in official curriculum documents. Rather than concluding that these themes are contradictory and incoherent, the conclusion asks how these multiple dialogic facets of Australian nation-ness potentially offer a better response to complex times than any coherent monologic orthodoxy might.

Using information communication technologies to develop dynamic curriculum frameworks for diverse cohorts: a case study from event management

This article investigates the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) in establishing a well-aligned, authentic learning environment for a diverse cohort of non-cognate and cognate students studying event management in a higher education context. Based on a case study which examined the way ICTs assisted in accommodating diverse learning needs, styles and stages in an event management subject offered in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, the article uses an action research approach to generate grounded, empirical data on the effectiveness of the dynamic, individualised curriculum frameworks that the use of ICTs makes possible. The study provides insights into the way non-cognate and cognate students respond to different learning tools. It finds that whilst non-cognate and cognate students do respond to learning tools differently, due to a differing degree of emphasis on technical, task or theoretical competencies, the use of ICTs allows all students to improve their performance by providing multiple points of entry into the content. In this respect, whilst the article focuses on the way ICTs can be used to develop an authentic, well-aligned curriculum model that meets the needs of event management students in a higher education context, with findings relevant for event educators in Business, Hospitality, Tourism and Creative Industries, the strategies outlined may also be useful for educators in other fields who are faced with similar challenges when designing and developing curriculum for diverse cohorts.

Preservice teachers’ views : Issues for learning to teach SOSE in an overcrowded curriculum

A cohort of third-year preservice teachers (n=24) was given the opportunity to observe and participate in Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) in primary classrooms through a series of school visits during a semester-long unit. These visits were designed to give preservice teachers opportunities to connect SOSE teaching theories studied in the university setting to SOSE teaching practices within schools. This study investigates the extent of the preservice teachers’ opportunities to observe SOSE teaching in the primary school. Responses from a survey showed that the majority of preservice teachers only agreed with 6 of the 25 items associated with the six categories (personal-professional skill development, system requirements, teaching practices, student behavior, feedback to students, and reflection on practice). Written responses from the questionnaire concurred that most had not experienced SOSE teaching. Various issues are discussed around providing preservice teachers with SOSE teaching experiences. School executives, teachers and university staff need to be part of the process to ensure preservice teachers are receiving quality SOSE teaching experiences that will assist in their pedagogical development. A wider question is also raised through this paper. If preservice teachers are unable to experience quality SOSE teaching in school visits designed for such a purpose, does this signal a changing emphasis in education that leaves the social sciences and humanities off the education agenda?

Curriculum, assessment teaching and learning for all

This chapter explores how the culture of classrooms and schools can acknowledge diversity and meet all learning needs. Classroom and school culture can and should enhance the belonging and learning of all students. Understanding of learning, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment influences the ways teachers consider their expectations of student achievement and participation in school. We revisit the theory of social constructionism to emphasise the development of shared and valued curriculum, which meets all learner needs. Decisions about what to teach, how to teach and assess, and what supports student needs are important considerations discussed in this chapter. Key messages drawn from the Australian and New Zealand curriculum reinforce the need to ensure education responds to the diversity of students in classrooms. A range of models of pedagogy that have influenced education in Australia and New Zealand are presented, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of students who have disabilities. In addition, the issues related to student and teacher identity, the importance of respectful partnerships that acknowledge family knowledge, and respectful collaboration are discussed. Belonging to a community of learners is made possible through teachers forming authentic relationships with students and their families. In turn, these relationships support teachers to understand how the students in their classrooms learn, and to know their students’ strengths and interests.

Towards Asia literacy : the Australian curriculum and Asian-Australian children's literature

This paper is concerned with the ways Asia Literacy can be developed in response to the new Australian Curriculum. In particular, it addresses the learning possibilities of the Asian-Australian Literature and Publishing Project (AACLAP) available through AustLit: the Australian Literature Resource. The paper argues that the AACLAP dataset provides a broad range of resources through which to address the cross curriculum priority of the Australian Curriculum on Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia. It contends that AACLAP has the potential to make a valuable contribution to teachers’ efforts to incorporate this cross curriculum priority in their classroom practice whilst also developing the general capabilities of intercultural understanding and the use of information and communication technology (ICT). This discussion is of particular significance to teachers of English and History, given that these disciplines are implemented in the first phase of the Australian Curriculum in schools. The paper concludes that by drawing on the broad range of texts available in the AACLAP collection as well as the Critical Anthology and the Research and Learning Trails, teachers and students will be much better positioned to develop a deeper understanding of the diversity of the Asian region and the complexities of Asian-Australian relationships.

Responding to national curriculum goals for English language learners : enhancing reading strategies in high school content areas

The official need for content teachers to teach the language features of their fields has never been greater in Australia than now. In 2012, the recently formed national curriculum board announced that all teachers are responsible for the English language development of students whose first language or dialect is not Standard Australian English (SAE). This formal endorsement is an important juncture regarding the way expertise might be developed, perceived and exchanged between content and language teachers through collaboration, in order for the goals of English language learners in content areas to be realised. To that end, we conducted an action research project to explore and extend the reading strategies pedagogy of one English language teacher who teaches English language learners in a parallel junior high school Geography program. Such pedagogy will be valuable for all teachers as they seek to contribute to English language development goals as outlined in national curricula.

'These are my photos of when I was little' : Locating Media Arts in the Primary School Curriculum

‘Media Arts’ has been included as a fifth area of the Arts for the Australian Curriculum which will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to Year Six (Y6) from 2014. The current curriculum design is underpinned by an approach familiar to media educators who combine creative practice and critical response to develop students’ media literacies. Media Arts within the Australian Curriculum will place Australia at the forefront of international efforts to promote media education as an entitlement for all children. Even with this mandated endorsement, however, there remains ongoing debate about where to locate media education in school curricula. Historically, media education in Australia has been approached through diverse curriculum activities at the secondary school level. These include subject English’s critical literacy objectives; vocationally oriented media and technology education or ICTs education; and Arts courses using new media technologies for creativity. In this chapter we consider the possibilities and challenges for Media Arts, specifically for primary school student learning. We draw on empirical evidence from a research project that has trialled a Media Arts curriculum with students attending a primary school in a low socio-economic status and culturally diverse community on the outskirts of Brisbane, Queensland.

"More tick-the-box": the challenge of promoting interdisciplinary learning in the middle years through the Australian history curriculum

The Australian Curriculum marks national reforms in social science education, first with the return to the disciplines of history and geography and second, through a new approach to interdisciplinary learning. This paper raises the question of whether the promise of interdisciplinary learning can be realised in the middle years of schooling if teachers have to teach history as a discipline rather than within an over-arching integrated curriculum framework. The paper explores the national blueprints and considers the national history curriculum in light of theories of teachers’ knowledge and middle school education. Evidence from teacher interviews indicates that historical understanding can be achieved through integrated frameworks to meet the goals of middle schooling.

Curriculum design and higher order skills : challenging assumptions

This paper is based on an Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) funded evaluation in 13 universities across Australia and New Zealand of the use of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) projects in first-year engineering courses. All of the partner institutions have implemented this innovation differently and comparison of these implementations affords us the opportunity to assemble "a body of carefully gathered data that provides evidence of which approaches work for which students in which learning environments". This study used a mixed-methods data collection approach and a realist analysis. Data was collected by program logic analysis with course co-ordinators, observation of classes, focus groups with students, exit survey of students and interviews with staff as well as scrutiny of relevant course and curriculum documents. Course designers and co-ordinators gave us a range of reasons for using the projects, most of which alluded to their presumed capacity to deliver experience in and learning of higher order thinking skills in areas such as sustainability, ethics, teamwork and communication. For some students, however, the nature of the projects decreased their interest in issues such as ethical development, sustainability and how to work in teams. We also found that the projects provoked different responses from students depending on the nature of the courses in which they were embedded (general introduction, design, communication, or problem-solving courses) and their mode of delivery (lecture, workshop or online).

Thinking about Australia and its location in the modern world in the Australian Curriculum : history

The first national history curriculum is being implemented in Australia from 2013. As with the curriculums of other nations, this curriculum has evolved in response to a range of factors and its merits continue to be debated. In critiquing the sort of history education approach encapsulated in the new curriculum, I discuss some of the contextual factors and debates that have shaped the Australian Curriculum: History v0.3 (ACARA, 2012). In doing so, I also explore some of the recent international literature on how students think and learn about history in the classroom. In the third and final part of the paper, I raise some logistical issues and also question how students might engage with the notion of Australia as a nation in the modern world rapidly reshaped by the transformations occurring in Asia and share some concerns about the curriculum’s ‘world history approach’ for Year 10.

Asian representations in films for the Australian Curriculum : an annotated guide

In this annotated guide we offer a reference list, with brief synposes, of possible films for inclusion in schools and linked to the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E). These films meet one of the three cross curriculum priorities in the Australian Curriculum, which is Studies of Asia, specifically Australia’s contribution to Asia and Asia’s impact on Australia. This priority was recently introduced to curriculum policy in the 2008 Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council for Education Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, 2008). In this guide we include Australians films made by Asian Australian filmmakers, as well as films about people from Asian countries in Australia, where representations of Asia are a significant part of the film’s content.