POLICY, SETTINGS AND PRACTICE

Policy, Settings and Practice

Policy, Settings and Practice

Introduction

Curriculum has numerous definitions, which can be slightly confusing. In its broadest sense a curriculum may refer to all courses offered at a school. This is particularly true of schools at the university level, where the diversity of a curriculum might be an attractive point to a potential student.

Key Aspects of Professionalismn the context of Lifelong Learning Sector

In recent times there have been various attempts by national and state governments to develop curriculum frameworks and guidelines, standards frameworks and other externally imposed structures, the rhetoric of which is to improve the provision and practice of school education. While there are many constituencies who see this as an appropriate practice by the State, there are others who see this as a deliberate strategy to erode teacher professionalism and trust in the teaching profession. In this paper I examine the effects of centralised curriculum control, in particular the imposition of teaching standards on teacher professionalism.

I argue that the effect of these initiatives is the control of teachers' work, and to define what constitutes professional knowledge and judgement which promotes one particular version of teacher professionalism and is eroding alternative forms of teacher professionalism. Over twenty years ago William Boyd (1979:80) wrote “If there is one proposition about curriculum politics that is clear, it is that school curriculum becomes an issue in communities and societies that are undergoing significant social change …curriculum policy making … generally is characterised by the … mundane strategy of disjointed incrementalism.” Back then Boyd maintained that the increasing politicization of education meant that contemporary reforms will make future reform still more difficult to obtain.

Armed with hindsight Boyd's comments are as relevant today as they were more than twenty years ago. What then does this tell us about curriculum change and control? First and foremost curriculum policy is a site of struggle; professional vs bureaucratic agendas; political interests vs educational processes and outcomes; social vs political needs, and so on. Second, and emerging from the first is that the content and processes of curriculum and curriculum development is political. Third, curriculum documents are open to multiple readings and despite attempts by bureaucracies to impose a preferred reading on the curriculum text, teachers, in the privacy of their own classrooms, interpret and implement these documents on the basis of their own experience, discipline base, beliefs and philosophy of teaching and education. The attempt to control meaning may well be seen to be futile In developing my aprgument I identify five assumptions that guide and frame my thinking.

First, curriculum control as a field of study or a political practice is not new, nor will it go away. Given the fundamentally political nature of education in general and curriculum in particular, there will always be attempts by the State to exert control over the content and delivery of education provision. The attempts by the Queensland government in the 1970s and 1980s to control education by banning MACOS and the SEMP materials ...