Classifying curriculum scholarship in Australia: A review of postgraduate theses 1975–2005

Abstract

This paper discusses an initial analysis of the form of Australian postgraduate scholarship over the last four decades in relation to curriculum inquiry. The study forms part of an ARC funded project on the shifts and emphases of Australian curriculum policy from 1975 to 2005 which seeks to contribute to understandings of how Australian curriculum has developed across states and over time. Analyses of changing emphases within education thesis production are hampered by the lack of systematic and consistent indexing of the theses, but within the criteria and methods we used, the thesis analysis elicited some tantalising findings. These seem to show a changing focus away from curriculum study in the most recent decade of Australian postgraduate theses, following three decades of rising interest in that area of education. But the study also demonstrated inherent methodological and practical problems for doing the inquiry itself, in terms of (1) the ways we categorise and think about education as a field; (2) limitations of the archiving and coding practices we have put in place to sustain a sense of our own history and the need to improve these; and, (3) potentially, research assessment now in train, and its intention to categorise work via “field of research” codes.