Responding as an Anglican school to the emerging Australian Curriculum

By Dr Bryan Cowling

Posted on 21 March 2011

As Christians and as professional educators, we welcome the development of a national school curriculum and we acknowledge the opportunities its implementation provides for us to plan, program, teach and equip our students to learn Christianly.

Our response is set within the context of our belief that all truth is God’s truth and all of it is held together by his Son, Jesus Christ. [Colossians 1.17 and 2.2-3]

Ultimately the enacted curriculum (to borrow a term from Douglas Barnes (1976) is what individual teachers do with the Australian Curriculum with their students in their classrooms.  It is within individual classrooms that the Australian Curriculum will be implemented. But teachers can and will be influenced by their past experience, their immediate peers and by the curriculum outlook of the school within which they teach. It is therefore very important in every school that there is a shared vision for and understanding of the Australian Curriculum.

The starting point for this could be a series of executive meetings, complemented by staff, grade and faculty meetings, using as their starting point the school’s existing curriculum framework, philosophy or its equivalent, and the ACARA document: The Shape of the Australian Curriculum, Version 2.0, December 2010. The latter is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reasons for, the shape, composition and significance of the Australian Curriculum. It contains 108 numbered paragraphs.

Although we have been discussing the desirability of a national curriculum since the early 1980s, it is only in the past few years that all State and Territory Governments and the Commonwealth have succeeded, through the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians in converting the dream into a reality.

In their discussions, school executives and teaching staff should become familiar with the content and intent of the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals. These are listed and explained in Paragraph 15. There are some very telling phrases within this paragraph which should resonate in different ways with educators who wish to teach Christianly. These include:

• thinking deeply and logically
• make sense of their world and think about how things have become the way they are
• motivated to reach their full potential
• have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical well-being
• have a sense of optimism about their lives and the future
• maintaining healthy, satisfying lives
• act with moral and ethical integrity
• work for the common good
• responsible global and local citizens

At this point, it could be a salutary exercise for executives and teaching staff to revisit the school’s aims and curriculum philosophy. These may be compared and contrasted with the rationale for the Australian Curriculum (outlined in paragraphs 9 to 16).

Inevitably this exercise will result in discussion of such questions as:

• How ‘shared’ are the goals we are seeking to achieve in our school and to what extent are they (or can they be) aligned to those that underpin the Australian Curriculum?
• How holistic is our actual (as distinct from our idealistic) approach to education and are the intellectual, personal, social and educational needs (paragraph 9) of every student being addressed?
• Where does global thinking (paragraph 10) figure in our delivery of curriculum?
• When we ‘anticipate the conditions in which young Australians will need to function… when they complete their schooling’ (paragraph 11), do we think of that in an eternal dimension or just in terms of the immediate post-school years?
• Is critiquing of consumerism, self-commoditisation, individualism, and flawed realities a legitimate part of helping young people to meet the challenges of the future?
• Where does serious consideration of ‘relationism’ fit within our enacted curriculum?

 In the course of discussions, executives and teaching staff will identify the issues and points on which there is a synergy between the school’s aims and curriculum philosophy and those expressed in the Australian Curriculum. But there are bound to be points on which there is a real or perceived difference because neither education nor curriculum is neutral. These issues need to be discussed constructively.

I would like to have seen a greater emphasis within the ‘curriculum’ as well as within the shaping document on what it means to know something and how we know. Theories of knowledge are very important. There is, however a glimmer of hope within paragraph 59:

The Australian Curriculum is designed to ensure students develop the knowledge and understanding on which the major disciplines are based. Each discipline offers a distinctive lens through which we interpret experience, determine what counts as evidence and a good argument for action, scrutinize knowledge and argument, make judgements about value and add to knowledge.

I think schools should unpack the implications of this paragraph and explore the opportunities it provides to implement a coherent, school-wide approach to epistemology.

Paragraph 38 of ‘The Shape of the Australian Curriculum’ is quite significant:

The Australian Curriculum does not make assumptions about how the curriculum will be delivered in schools. Schools will continue to make decisions about how best to organize student learning according to student needs and interests and school and community contexts. In some cases, students will commence accredited senior secondary studies (general or vocational in nature) or undertake other programs developed by the school.  

Whilst the subject-specific curriculum documents provide direction and guidance for teachers and define content and intended learning outcomes, they leave considerable room for schools and consequently teachers to exercise choice in respect to pedagogy and the mechanics of teaching. Traditionally, in New South Wales, teachers have determined their own pedagogy within the framework of the syllabus content determined by the Board of Studies.

Paragraph 38 provides all schools with a timely opportunity to discuss which approaches to pedagogy sit most comfortably with the school’s aims and curriculum philosophy. Paragraph 38 and several others like it, highlight the fact that the Australian Curriculum is not intended to occupy the entire timetable of student learning during the week. Schools have flexibility in the use of the time not devoted to the implementation of the Australian Curriculum.  [See paragraphs 25, 30, 33, 54, 60, 72, 85, 87, 89]

This is an opportunity for schools to be creative.

One of the criticisms that has been leveled from some quarters at the emerging curriculum is that it reinforces the balkanization of learning through the perpetuation of discrete subjects or disciplines. More progressive curriculum thinkers would prefer to have seen less subject specialisation and greater integration between them. There is merit in their argument, from both a secular and a biblical perspective. Our current approach to curriculum delivery, especially in secondary schools, is to deliver between 5 and eight discrete discipline-based lessons to students each day and hope that their brains can process and integrate what has been taught. In other words, holistic learning is what we expect our students to do, but as teachers of discrete subjects, we don’t make it easy for our students to do this. The Shape of the Australian Curriculum makes numerous references to the value of ‘integration’ of studies [See paragraphs 16 –dots 7 and 9, 25, 38, 56 and 58) and it refers to General Capabilities (Paragraphs 68-72) and Cross-Curriculum Priorities (Paragraphs 73-74). Each of these is worthy of serious consideration and deliberate inclusion within the school’s curriculum plan.

There is, in my view, a great opportunity for schools which are serious about approaching (all) education Christianly, to add value to their students’ learning by introducing a distinct learning opportunity each week in which students are assisted to think holistically – firstly about the complementarity and differences between each of the subjects which they are studying – and secondly to think about how the truths discovered in each of these subjects cohere with the truths God has revealed to us through his Word and his Son. I hesitate to call this learning opportunity’ a subject, in the traditional sense, lest it atrophy like other subjects. It needs to be something more structured and systematic than most pastoral care sessions, but it needs to have enough flexibility to ensure genuine student engagement.

My point is, the Australian Curriculum does not purport to deliver to students at each stage or level any real coherence in learning. That does not concern me, but what does concern me, is that in the absence of deliberate action being taken at the school level, students will continue to graduate from our 21^st century schools well versed in particular subjects but having a negligible appreciation of how all that they have learned fits together, and more seriously from an eternal and biblical perspective, what it all means in respect to God and our relationship with him.

References:

ACARA                  The Shape of the Australian Curriculum, December 2010

Barnes D              From Communication to Curriculum, Penguin, 1976

MCEETYA             Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, December, 2008

Watson B             Secularism, Schools and Religious Education, in Felderhof M, Thompson P, Torevell D, Inspiring Faith in Schools, Ashgate, London, 2008.

Dr Bryan Cowling is also an Honorary Associate in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, a member of the Academic Board of the Wesley Institute, a former Director of Curriculum and Educational Programs in the NSW Department of Education and founding principal of an Anglican school.

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