A Curriculum for the Future

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A Curriculum for the Future

• Professor Alan Reid
• 2002-2003 DEST Research Fellow

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The Context of Schooling From Certainty to
Uncertainty

• Old economy to new economy
• Old citizenship to new citizenship
• Old identities to new identities

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The 1989-1993 national curriculum failed because
it

• lacked an adequate rationale
• failed to take account of political realities
• lacked a research base and was conceptually
  flawed
• failed to build a a constituency of support
• failed to take account of what is known about
  curriculum change.

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Aggregative democracy

• An aggregative model of democracy interprets
  democracy as a process of aggregating the
  individual preferences of citizens in choosing
  public officials and policies.
• It assumes that democracy flourishes best in an
  individualistic society with a competitive market
  economy, minimal state intervention, a
  politically passive citizenry and an active elite
  political leadership.

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Deliberative democracy

• A deliberative model of democracy understands the
  democratic process to be primarily the discussion
  of problems, conflicts and claims of need or
  interest where, through open and public dialogue,
  proposals and arguments are tested and
  challenged. That is, decisions are not made by
  aggregating individual preferences, but by a
  collective determination of what are considered
  to be the best reasons.

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An Australian curriculum story

• Content
• Assessment
• Curriculum differentiation

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A dominant view of curriculum

• Purposes acquisition of knowledge
• Curriculum content or syllabus
• Knowledge exists independently of the knower
• Curriculum organisation starts with a focus on
  knowledge, organises around subjects (learning
  of), and atomises content
• Curriculum change valued knowledge identified by
  experts, developed and implemented
• Student passive consumer of knowledge
• Teacher implementer of a syllabus teacher as
  technician.

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KNOWLEDGE AND ITS ORGANISATION
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Teaching OF subjects
KNOWLEDGE AND ITS ORGANISATION
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CAPABILITIES

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS ORGANISATION
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CAPABILITIES

• Teaching through knowledge FOR capabilities

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS ORGANISATION
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Examples of capabilities

• Knowledge work
• Innovation and design
• Productive social relationships
• Active participation
• Intercultural understandings
• Interdependence and sustainability
• Understanding self
• Ethics and values
• Communication and multiliteracies

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Capabilities and curriculum

• Provides a way to conceptualise equity without
  imposing a uniform curriculum
• Offers greater flexibility for schools to design
  context-specific curriculum in order to achieve
  common capabilities
• Doesnt atomise the curriculum
• Addresses established binaries such as
  disciplinary v interdisciplinary state v
  national top-down v bottom up etc.

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Policy Implications of a Capabilities Approach

• It advances the idea of a national (Australian)
  curriculum because it
• uses existing architecture (eg., National Goals,
  state curricula frameworks)
• doesnt threaten discipline boundaries while
  facilitating transdisciplinary work
• doesnt threaten existing State frameworks, while
  providing the Australian government with a
  mechanism to influence the curriculum agenda

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Policy Implications of a Capabilities Approach
(continued)

• provides a focus for accountability
• generates stimulating professional debate and
  provides a focus for that debate
• Enables a national approach with lots of room for
  local interpretation
• Facilitates a way for governments to have a
  specific focus without narrowing the curriculum
  (eg., literacy and numeracy).

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Other possibilities of a capabilities approach

• It broadens the concept of curriculum beyond the
  compulsory years of schooling, and beyond formal
  education, to being one that concerns all
  citizens. It therefore suggests a way to ground
  the concept of the learning/knowledge society
• It suggests a way to conduct community debate
  about education by giving that debate a focus
  and it offers a natural division between matters
  for community consideration and matters for
  professional (expert) consideration.

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Other possibilities of a capabilities approach

• It suggests a way to conceptualise the work of
  DEST by, for example
• Providing a framework for connecting up the many
  activities of DEST
• Organising a Branch around capabilities rather
  than specific programs
• Establishing cross-Group teams to coordinate the
  development of specific capabilities.

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