National curriculum materials needed - not vague objectives

When teachers choose a curriculum to place on the school booklist, they look for a coherent sequence of activity descriptions that match a set of curriculum objectives and include a variety of student materials as well as teaching ideas and assessment tools. This curriculum often includes a printed text, a digital version of the text on a CD-ROM along with a wide variety of other support and stimulus material, a website updated with continuing support materials and ideas sometimes shared amongst a group of teachers using the same resources. When governments argue about curriculum, they mean a sequenced set of vague teaching objectives. For example, the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) at its most detailed provides “progression points” to guide teachers: ICT Level 4.5: “identification and analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of decisions made and actions taken when solving problems and developing understandings using ICT tools”. The statements in such curricula are so vague even in context that they of virtually no use to teachers. In Victoria, teachers and schools have been distracted from high quality curricula for decades by repeated government exhortation to rebuild around a fresh new “curriculum framework”. Publishers, who need to deliver materials useful in classrooms if they want to sell anything, end up rehashing rather than rewriting. They know that the next big change is probably only months away. If you really want to develop consistent high quality educational practice across Australia, just ask State Governments to provide lists of the published classroom curriculum materials that they recommended for their schools. If they can’t provide such a list, I would ask them why ! Then, continuously publish information on the number of schools using each such resource. If and when consensus grows across the nation through the choice of individual schools, it would be seen in these patterns of use. Such a consensus would have far faster and far more powerful effect on parents and teachers than the outcome of any meeting of national boffins and politicians. But please, please - don’t spend years, dollars and precious effort arguing over vague curriculum statements that may never significantly influence classrooms – as we continue to do in Victoria.

Stephen Digby

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