Curriculum Change and Resistance: Challenges Identified During the Implementation of an Expansive State English Curriculum

• In Event: Curriculum and the Classroom: Using Theory to Conceptualize Everyday Practice

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a doctoral study that undertook a content analysis of a corpus of curriculum texts, news reports and case interviews with teachers during a period of curriculum change in the Australian state of New South Wales. Using textual analysis of the discourses constructed in each data set, grounded theory methods are used to identify the core categories of influence on the implementation of a senior high school English curriculum, in which film and media texts were for the first time prescribed alongside traditional literature for mandatory study. Finally, questions are posed about the need to reconceptualize the functions of schooling in order to realize more productive and equitable futures for English and literacy curriculum.

Author

• Kelli McGraw, Queensland University of Technology