G. Ditchburn

The Australian curriculum: finding the hidden narrative?

The Australian curriculum to be introduced in all Australian schools over the next few years provides two competing narratives about curriculum. An overt narrative provides an unproblematic view of curriculum where the rhetoric and discourse that promotes a ‘world-class curriculum’ effectively obscures a second narrative. This second narrative indicates that the bases of the proposed curriculum are actually narrow and conservative and where implicit assumptions about knowledge, pedagogy and power have been camouflaged. This article will critically analyse The Shape of the Australian Curriculum Version 2.0, one of the key policy documents that informs the organisation and content of the second phase of the Australian curriculum. In a tradition that has its origins in the work of Freire and other critical education theorists, this article explores the assumptions and contradictions that inhere in The Shape of the Australian Curriculum. This article concludes that the introduction of an Australian curriculum should be an opportune time to engage in debate about an alternative narrative such as the one associated with Freires critical pedagogy, in order to balance the prescriptive and top-down curriculum that is currently being prepared.

A national Australian curriculum: in whose interests?

The introduction of an Australian curriculum is likely to have a widespread and long-term impact on schools, teachers and students, and yet there has been a swift and an almost unquestioning acceptance of its introduction by the Australian public and by educators. This paper will use theoretical frameworks informed by Gramscis cultural hegemony and the discourses and concepts related to global neo-liberalism, to contribute to an understanding of the overwhelming acceptance of the idea of a national curriculum. The paper will refer to critiques of neo-liberalism that have shaped a range of educational priorities internationally and in Australia. Using a critical approach to sources from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority and elsewhere, it will be argued that the introduction of an Australian curriculum is intentionally positioned to primarily meet the needs of global markets and the economy. The paper will conclude by suggesting that economic interests under neo-liberal conditions are driving and defining our approach to an Australian curriculum and that this agenda has the potential to sideline other important considerations, such as addressing issues of diversity and local contexts that must inhere in any curriculum provision.

The "Australian Curriculum: History"--The Challenges of a Thin Curriculum?.

The Australian Curriculum: History has emerged out of a neoliberal federal education policy landscape. This is a policy landscape where pragmatic and performative, rather than pedagogic concerns are clearly foregrounded, and this has implications for curriculum development and implementation. A useful way to conceptualise the features, assumptions and potentialities of the Australian Curriculum: History that has been produced from these policy imperatives is through a framework provided by the descriptors, ‘thin’ and ‘thick’. A thin curriculum is one that essentially equates curriculum with a product, and where the prescribed content is central to understanding what a curriculum is. A thick curriculum, on the other hand, is one where the curriculum is understood as a verb, where the details of content are secondary to an exploration of bigger questions and concepts, and where curriculum theory is the starting point for the selection of content. The use of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ as the ends of a continuum of curriculum provides insights into the purposes of a curriculum. Ultimately, such a dichotomy exposes assumptions about what is important knowledge and who is in control of the curriculum. This paper focuses on how the Australian Curriculum: History as an example of a ‘thin’ curriculum, presents a number of challenges.