Posts Tagged australian_curriculum

Don’t delay – get involved NSW

Posted by kmcg2375 in english on March 5, 2010

Without a strong response from English teachers about what they like and don’t like about the Draft Australian Curriculum, the chances of it changing are slim to none.

Here are the details of consultation and information meetings happening in NSW in the coming month.

Remember, consultation ends in May, so make sure you respond as an individual, as a faculty, as a school, or as part of the profession through these meetings to make sure your voice is heard.

Because come 2011, it’ll be too late to argue.

NSW English Teachers’ Association consultation meetings:
Saturday 20th March 9.30am – 3.30pm

  • Sydney: Seminar Rooms, DET Curriculum Directorate.
  • Armidale: Armidale High School
  • Border: Albury High School
  • Orange District: Canobolas High School
  • Peel Valley: Quirindi High School
  • Wagga: Wagga Wagga High School

http://www.englishteacher.com.au/downloads/FlyerNCK10Consult.pdf

NSW BOS consultation meetings:

  • 9 March – Campbelltown Golf Club
  • 16 March – Tara Anglican School
  • 11 March – UNE Tamworth Centre
  • 15 March – Trinity Catholic College Senior Campus Goulburn
  • 18 March – [VIDEOCONFERENCE] State Government Offices Wollongong

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/australian-curriculum/

NSW DET online consultation forums:

Videoconferences held at various locations from 4pm-6pm

  • 15 March – English 7-10 (venues)
  • 30 March – English K-10 (venues)

ACARA will also be running a Public Information Session for New South Wales on:
Thursday 25 March 6pm – 7:30pm
Venue is TBA, but most likely will be in Sydney.

http://www.acara.edu.au/public_information_sessions.html

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Why I fight for my curriculum

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, technology on March 4, 2010

Some interesting conversations have converged for (on?) me this week following the release of the draft Australian Curriculum.  Discussions with Roger Pryor and Jan Green through tweets and blog posts about the power of social networks and leadership have challenged me to be more optimistic about what will happen in classrooms after the launch of the National Curriculum.

Roger and Jan are both advocates of leadership models where participative (loose) practices within the school can mediate the directive (tight) policy environment and accountability systems within which we work.  In a post to her blog Jan describes being filled with confidence for the future of students because of the powerful and passionate debate about national curriculum taking place between education professionals through social networks.  On this point I certainly agree.  In this brave new world of federal curriculum control strong leaders and their PLNs will be key in influencing the spread of new ideas and practices.

But optimism about curriculum enactment is not enough for me.

Tonight I have been re-reading a paper by Colin Lankshear that identifies dominant meanings of literacy and related reform proposals, and I would like to quote him here at some length:

The meanings of literacy in educational reform discourse and their associated modes of “doing and being around texts” are both informed by and intended to inform ideals and practices of literacy much more generally.  They are also intended to permeate larger “social ways of doing and being” – such as being workers, citizens, parents, consumers, and members of organisations – that are mediated by texts.

…Hence, investigating meanings of literacy in educational reform proposals also involves asking what (and whose) perspectives, priorities, and world views prevail within them.

…Reform proposals are like scripts, frames, or “cultural models.”  They encode values intended to change people and social practices – and which will change people and practices to a greater or lesser extent depending on how fully they get implemented in practice.

…The key question here is: what kids of “visions” for life, people, and practices more generally, are encoded in these scripts?

Lankshear is discussing literacy here, which for me is apt as it is the English curriculum that is of most concern to me.  But his observations about educational reform apply to all curriculum areas.

Just a few days on from the release of the draft Australian Curriculum for English, my biggest problem with its “vision” for English is the constraint of new literacies.  Even if we were to accept the (100 year old) notion of Language, Literature and Literacy being divorced as separate ‘strands’, the lack of reference to explicit spoken and visual ‘skills’ in the Language strand is a gross neglect in this curriculum reform. This is without doubt a reaction to conservative media hype about ‘dumbed down’ curriculum, and a pandering to parent-voters who will feel reassured by a ‘back to basics’, ‘3Rs’ approach to teaching English.

While I too am hopeful that schools will be able to implement this curriculum in meaningful, ‘loose’ ways, it simply isn’t good enough to stand back and let through a script that, as Lankshear insists, will change people and practices, in such a retrograde way.  English teachers have fought long and hard for rich and generative definitions of literacy, and of what it means to understand and create meaning in a wide range of texts.

*sigh*

What are we going to do?

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The Australian Curriculum for English

Posted by kmcg2375 in english on March 1, 2010

As we have already heard from our trusty newspapers (who magically had obtained copies prior to release) we have much to look forward to in the Australian Curriculum for English:

The curriculum takes a more traditional view of literature than has been apparent in some states in the past decade or so. – Justine Ferrari in The Australian 27 Feb

Senior educationists believe the new curriculum for students in kindergarten to Year 10, due to come into force next year, has been infiltrated by fringe lobby groups seeking to include issues such as multiculturalism, indigenous rights, ethical behaviour and sustainable living. – Joe Hildebrand & Bruce McDougall in Daily Tele 27 Feb

GRAMMAR will be front and centre of the federal government’s new national English curriculum. – Stephanie Pealting in SMH 28 Feb

AUSTRALIA’s new national school curriculum is to be unveiled today in a long overdue recognition of the need to return the three Rs to the classroom. – Editorial in The Herald Sun 28 Feb

Though, we already knew all this earlier in the week from Julia Gillard’s address to the National Press Club.

ALL states and territories will be forced to follow a set program for teaching reading under the first national English curriculum, which stipulates the letters, sounds and words students must learn in each year of school. – Justine Ferrari in The Australian 25 Feb

Education Minister Julia Gillard told the National Press Club yesterday that, for the first time, grammar would be taught at all levels of school and parents would have a chance to comment directly on what their children would learn. – Scott Hannaford in The Canberra Times 25 Feb

Actually, we have known that this was coming ever since the release of the National Curriculum Shaping Paper [PDF link] back in May 2009.  The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: English paper proposed that K-10 curriculum in English be organised around three interrelated strands:

  1. Language: The Language strand involves the development of a coherent, dynamic and evolving body of knowledge about the English language and how it works.
  2. Literature: Students learn to interpret, appreciate, evaluate and create literary texts such as narrative, poetry, prose, plays, film and multimodal texts, in spoken, print and digital/online contexts.
  3. Literacy: Students apply their English skills and knowledge to read, view, speak, listen to, write and create a growing repertoire of texts.

The separation of these strands sure is nice and neat.  Cute even…the alliteration could appeal to some English teachers.

But while these separate strands might be neat, they have resulted in precisely what English teachers feared: a regression to a 100 year old teaching approach that divorces the learning of the mechanics of ‘language’ from the learning of the feelings, values and ideas it represents.  We’re trying to teach communicators, not copy-typists!  But, predictably, here are some of the content descriptors for what students must learn from the Language strand of the 7-10 curriculum for English:

  • Resources for creating cohesive texts including identifying reference items, the use of substitution and ellipsis, relationships between vocabulary items, and the role of text connectives (Year 7)
  • Understanding spelling rules including origins, word endings, Greek and Latin roots, base words, suffixes, prefixes, spelling patterns and generalisations (Year 7)
  • Sentences can consist of a number of independent and dependent clauses combined in a variety of ways (Year 8 )
  • Purpose of  devices used by authors  including symbolism, analogy and allusion (Year 8 )
  • Language can be multi-layered, resulting in varying interpretations (Year 9) (…a bit late to learn this?)
  • Information can be condensed by collapsing a clause into a noun phrase (nominalisation) (Year 9)
  • Different perspectives can be introduced by citing the words and views of others
  • Construction of multimodal and digital texts involves knowledge of visual grammar (Year 10) (visual literacy…finally!)

Developing skills in reading and writing is something that I value, that English teachers universally value.  But skills such as spelling, grammar and syntax should be taught as means of building a student’s own representational world, rather than as ends in themselves.

Without a clear pedagogical direction that guides teachers to embed language learning within quality literacy and literature teaching, as well as differentiate language learning for students reading at different levels, the Australian English Curriculum will doom countless future students to exercises in disconnected rote learning and grammar drills. Will your child be one of them?

Visit the ACARA website for information on how to submit your views. Have your say about the experience you want your children and students to have by responding during the consultation period from 1 March 2010 to the end of May 2010.

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