Developing a New National History Curriculum in Australia: The Public Authority, the Teachers, the Discipline

• In Event: Constructing a Common Curriculum: System, Discipline, School, and Classroom

Abstract

Prior to this decade, there has been no common framework and content for the subject history across the different Australian states. Now a new national curriculum authority, ACARA, has developed such a framework, using expert panels and public consultation, and with trialling and implementation now underway. But what is history and how is the subject conceived by the curriculum authority, academic historians, public debate and teachers? The purpose of this paper is to show the pressures and beliefs framing the development of the new curriculum for history, both at a policy and curriculum management level, and in relation to how teachers and academics across three states think about what matters in history and what is problematic in the new developments.

The paper draws on interview-based research with teachers and academics in history across three states to show that different perspectives on history as a subject dominate the public and political debates (emphasizing the story history is to tell) compared with those held by history teachers (emphasizing the value of the skills and competencies students learn through history). The analysis of interviews and policy draws on sociological theories of knowledge (eg Young 2008, Bernstein 1975) and sociology of education policy and testing (eg Tolofari 2005, Taubman 2011), and the focus here on the school subject history is part of a more general consideration of directions and implications of contemporary curriculum reform nationally and globally (Yates and Grumet 2011).

The paper argues that the mechanism of developing curriculum via a new national public authority associated with governmental political promises produces tendencies to both overload and hollow out the curriculum, and from teachers’ perspectives, a danger of undermining what is valuable in this subject. At the same time, the investigation shows the way in which content selection and ‘the story history tells’ matters in moves towards any common framework for curriculum, and is not resolvable simply by reference to the discipline or to teacher preferences.

References
Bernstein, B. (1971) On the classification and framing of educational knowledge, in M.F.D. Young (ed) Knowledge and Control.

Taubman, D. (2011) Making nothing happen: affective life under audit, In L.Yates and M. Grumet (see below).

Tolofari, S. (2005) ‘New public management and education’, Policy Futures in Education, 3(1), 75-89.

Young, M. (2008). Bringing Knowledge Back In: from social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. London: Routledge.

Yates, L. & Grumet, M. (2011) (ed), Curriculum in Today's World: configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. (World Yearbook of Education 2011) Routledge, London.

Authors

• Lyn Yates, University of Melbourne

• Kate O'Connor, The University of Melbourne