We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.

Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.

Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The Australian curriculum: a critical interrogation of why, what and where to?

  • The Australian curriculum
  • Published:
Curriculum Perspectives Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

ᅟThis Garth Boomer Memorial Lecture contextualises in the broadest sense the creation of the Australian curriculum. As such, this sociological account will argue that the national curriculum is both a response to and articulation of globalisation, set against the intricate complexities of Australian educational federalism. The analysis will demonstrate how this emergence had a long and slow gestation and was enabled by the political contingency in 2007 of all Labor governments at the federal, state and territory levels. The Australian curriculum now has an institutional home in the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and appears to have bipartisan political support, apart from ideological debates about what should be included. The lecture considers the Australian curriculum as working together what knowledge students need to know (disciplines) and what sort of people they ought to become (cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities). The argument will situate the national curriculum against the broader national schooling policy assemblage (NAPLAN, My School, Melbourne Declaration, teacher and school leader standards) and interrogate it in terms of the limitations imposed by this contingent framing. These limiting factors include lack of an intellectual rationale, the distance of ACARA from schools, classrooms and teachers, and the restrictive legislative and compositional character of the Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leaders (AITSL), which frames standards for teachers, who are central to the productive enactment of the Australian curriculum. The overall argument is set against Garth Boomer’s innovative curriculum theorising

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. The sociological imagination argues for imbrications between social structures through time and individual practices of agency. This is a relational ontology. Bourdieu’s theoretical and empirical work is a very good example of such a relational ontology.

  2. This is also evident if one reads the ACARA document, The Shape of the Australian Curriculum 4.0 (ACARA 2013).

  3. Think, for example, of President Trump’s “America first”, and his assertion of an almost xenophobic ethno-nationalism.

  4. Of course, the emergence of the Common Core State Standards was used by the federal Obama administration in relation to its Race to the Top policy agenda that linked mandatory testing to the Standards and to federal funding.

  5. I would also argue that for valid comparisons of state and territory performance on NAPLAN and PISA that similar statistical work is required to take account of the reality that each of the states and territories is a different demographic and socio-economic entity. Additionally, international large scale assessments also work as technologies to construct talk of a national schooling system in Australia. Think here, for example of Australia’s PISA performance.

  6. This is even more the case for the OECD’s PISA Tests for Schools, where individual schools sit for PISA and their performance is compared with other schools and other national systems (see Lewis et al.2015 and Lingard and Lewis 2017).

  7. The success of Gonski 2.0 will depend on targeted strategies for improvement with a very specific social justice and equity focus. The question is how best to spend the extra funding for greatest impact.

  8. See Baroutsis and Lingard (2017) on how policy usage of PISA data neglects the equity implications of the data. Much more effective policy use could also be made of NAPLAN data re equity.

  9. There are also potential dangers of the enhanced commercialisation of Australian schooling with these developments. See here Lingard et al.,- 2017.

References

  • ACARA. (2013). The shape of the Australian curriculum 4.0. Sydney: ACARA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of globalization. Environ Plan, 34(3), 385–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, A. (2006). Fear of small numbers: An essay on the geography of anger. London: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Apple, M. W. (1979). Ideology and the curriculum. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2013) Australian Curriculum. Sydney: ACARA.

  • Australian Government. (2014). Review of the Australian curriculum. Canberra: Australian Government.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? French’s Forest. Sydney: Pearson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baroutsis, A., & Lingard, B. (2017). Counting and comparing school performance: An analysis of media coverage of PISA in Australia, 2000-2014. Journal of Education Policy, 32(4), 432–449.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, B. (1971). On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. In M. F. D. Young (Ed.), Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education (pp. 47–69). London: Collier-MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (2003). Firing back: Against the tyranny of the market. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brennan, M. (2011). National curriculum: A political-educational tangle. Aust J Educ, 55(3), 259–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brenner, N. (2004). New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, J. (1988). Strengthening Australia’s schools: A consideration of the focus and content of Australia’s schools. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Services.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, B. (Ed.). (1999). Designs on learning: Essays on curriculum and teaching by Garth boomer. Sydney: ACSA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris-Hart, C. (2010). National curriculum and federalism: The Australian experience. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 42(3), 295–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howell, A. (2017). ‘Because then you could never ever get a job’: children’s construction of NAPLAN as high stakes, Journal of Education Policy, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1305451.

  • Hursh, D. (2016). The end of public schools. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leigh, A. (2013). Battlers & Billionaires: The story of inequality in Australia. Sydney: Redback.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, S., Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2015). PISA for schools: Topological rationality and new spaces of the OECD’s global educational governance. Comp Educ Rev, 60(1), 27–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B. (2000). Federalism in schooling since the Karmel report (1973), schools in Australia: From modernist hope to postmodernist performativity. Aust Educ Res, 27(2), 25–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., & Lewis, S. (2017). Placing PISA and PISA for schools in two federalisms, Australia and the USA. Critical Studies in Education, 58(3), 266–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., & Rawolle, S. (2011). New scalar politics: Implications for education policy. Comp Educ, 47(4), 489–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., & McGregor, G. (2014). Two contrasting Australian curriculum responses to globalization: What students should learn or become. The Curriculum Journal, 25(1), 90–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., Martino, W., Rezai-Rashti, G., & Sellar, S. (2016). Globalizing educational accountabilities. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., O’Brien, P., & Knight, J. (1993). Strengthening Australia’s schools through corporate federalism? Aust J Educ, 37(3), 231–247.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., Sellar, S., & Savage, G. (2014). Re-articulating social justice as equity in schooling policy: The effects of testing and data infrastructures. Br J Sociol Educ, 35(5), 710–730.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lingard, B., Sellar, S., Hogan, A., & Thompson, G. (2017). Commercialisation in public schooling: Final report summary. Sydney: New South Wales Teachers Federation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luke, A. (2011). Documenting reproduction and inequality: Revisiting Jean Anyon’s ‘social class and school knowledge’. Curric Inq, 40(1), 167–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lury, C., Parisi, L., & Terranova, T. (2012). Introduction: The becoming topological of culture. Theory, Culture, and Society, 29(4-5), 3–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maton, K. (2014). Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • MCEETYA. (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. Carlton South, Victoria: MCEETYA Secretariat.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller, J. (2016). Knowledge and the curriculum in the sociology of knowledge. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward, & J. Pandya (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Vol. 1 (pp. 92–106). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Priestley, M., & Biesta, G. (Eds.). (2013). Reinventing the curriculum: New trends in curriculum policy and practice. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, A. (2005). Rethinking National Curriculum Collaboration: Towards an Australian curriculum. Canberra: Australian Government.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage, G. (2016). Who’s steering the ship? National curriculum reform and the reshaping of Australian federalism. Journal of Education Policy, 31(6), 833–850.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Savage, G., & Lewis, S. (2017). The phantom national? Assembling national teaching standards in Australia’s federal system. Journal of Education Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1325518.

  • Savage, G., & Lingard, B. (2018). Changing modes of governance in Australian teacher education policy. In N. Hobbel & B. Bales (Eds.), Teacher education policy & the common good: International perspectives. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage, G., & O’Connor, K. (2015). National agendas in global times: Curriculum reforms in Australia and the USA since the 1980s. Journal of Education Policy, 30(5), 609–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skourdoumbis, A. (2013). Classroom effectiveness research and inquiry, and its relevance to the development of public education policy: An Australian context. Int J Qual Stud Educ, 26(8), 967–985.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skourdoumbis, A. (2014). Teacher effectiveness: Making the difference to student achievement. Br J Educ Stud, 62(2), 111–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, G., Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2016). The life of data: Evolving national testing. In B. Lingard, G. Thompson, & S. Sellar (Eds.), National Testing in schools: An Australian assessment (pp. 212–229). London: New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (1976). Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory. In R. Dale, G. Esland, & M. MacDonald (Eds.), Schooling and capitalism: A sociological reader (pp. 202–210). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wyse, D., Hayward, L., & Pandya, J. (Eds.). (2016a). The SAGE handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Vol. 1. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wyse, D., Hayward, L., & Pandya, J. (Eds.). (2016b). The SAGE handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Vol. 2. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yates, L., & Grumet, M. (Eds.). (2011). Curriculum in Today’s world: Configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, M. F. D. (Ed.). (1971a). Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education. London: Collier-MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, M. F. D. (1971b). An approach to the study of curricula as socially organized knowledge. In M. F. D. Young (Ed.), Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education (pp. 19–46). London: Collier-MacMillan.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I thank Fazal Rizvi for his very helpful comments on an earlier version of this Garth Boomer Memorial Lecture.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Bob Lingard

Authors
  1. Bob Lingard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bob Lingard.

Additional information

This paper was delivered as the 2017 Garth Boomer Memorial Lecture at the 2017 ACSA Annual Conference.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Lingard, B. The Australian curriculum: a critical interrogation of why, what and where to?. Curric Perspect 38, 55–65 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-017-0033-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-017-0033-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation