The last ten years have witnessed the worldwide development of a new breed of national curriculum in a range of countries. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Australia’s proposed national curriculum, and recent changes to England’s National Curriculum provide telling examples of the emergence of a set of common trends in curriculum prescription. Such curricula seek to combine what are claimed to be the best features of top-down and bottom-up approaches to curriculum planning and development, providing both central guidance for schools (thus ensuring the maintenance of national standards) and sufficient flexibility for practitioners to take account of local needs. Common features include: (1) a shift from a detailed specification of knowledge/content towards a definition of the sorts of young people who will emerge from the education system (e.g. in Scotland, successful learners, effective contributors, confident individuals and responsible citizens); (2) a stated ambition to put the learner at the heart of schooling; (3) a detailed formulation of assessable learning outcomes organised into linear levels; and (4) emphasis on the central position of the teacher as an agent of change and professional developer of the curriculum.
While these trends seem to indicate a significant departure from several decades of central curricular prescription, these newly emerging forms of national curriculum theory, policy and practice are not without tensions and problems. The main aim of this session is to provide a critical analysis of these new forms of national curriculum, focusing on four dimensions that correspond with the common features outlined above: knowledge, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher development.
The symposium will commence with a short historical overview of trends in the development of national curricula and an outline of the key issues, presented by the session Chair, Mark Priestley (University of Stirling). This is followed by four paper presentations, one on each of the dimensions: (1) Gert Biesta (University of Stirling) will explore questions of knowledge raised in the selection of curricular content; (2) Rachel Lofthouse and David Leat (University of Newcastle) will examine how pedagogy might be developed within this curricular model; (3) Bob Lingard (University of Queensland) will interrogate whether ongoing assessment practices are fit for purpose within these new forms of curriculum; (4) Ian Menter and Moira Hulme (Universities of Oxford/Glasgow) will explore issues related to teacher professional learning as practitioners undertake school-based curriculum development. Each paper will provide a brief overview of the national context, before focusing on the theme in question.
It is remarkable that in a relatively short time and in quite different geographical locations quite similar ways of thinking about national curriculum frameworks, policies and practices have emerged. It is likely that the ideas informing these trends will spread more widely, which makes a critical examination of key issues and dimensions important, both from an academic perspective but also in order to develop ways of critical understanding that can empower teachers in engaging with new frameworks which, at least at the rhetorical level, provide them with more space for professional agency, judgement and decision making.