Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 23

Lynch, Smith, Howarth
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Staff availability or workload.
Employer or industry viewpoints.
Current or prospective student viewpoints.
Student abilities or limitations, or intake considerations.
Pedagogical argument, or academic merit.
University or Government requirement or regulation.
Professional accreditation needs, or syllabi set by professional bodies.
Academic “fashion”, including the desire to remain in step with other institutions (Gruba, et al.,
2004).
Australian state approaches to curriculum have changed over time, indicating how social change and the
factors above have affected curriculum developments. Accordingly, it is important to view ‘the curriculum’
as a field of ideological and political struggle in which the education professionals and their interests are but
one of the participating parties with no stronger claim to priority than any other group of interested players.
The NSW government observes:
“There are gaps and contradictions arising from the differing political, industrial, socio-economic
and cultural contexts within which each [curriculum] was written. Even if all the reports had been
written at the same time, differences between authors and audiences would militate against
uniformity” (Ministerial Advisory Committee on the Quality of Teaching, ‘NSW Developments’).
The involvement of the State in curriculum matters reveals the existing contract between educational
professionals, their unions and society and its many interest groups. These groups oversee the educational
infrastructure and experiences that students at all levels should undergo during specified phases of their lives.
At this high level of involvement and abstraction, we can see that “the curriculum” deals with such issues as
educational content, the sequencing of time such as levels of schooling and post-schooling, what teaching
institutions must do and in some cases, the characteristics of learning experiences, textbooks and new
technologies. Teacher education, teachers’ profiles and increasingly, system evaluation have taken on special
importance for the State as the role of ‘Education’ has assumed greater significance for global competition.
Understanding the Concept of Curriculum and its Influences
In order to get at the meanings of curriculum, we draw on Bernstein’s (1971) formulation of the formal
education context. He argued that in teaching there are three analytically distinct message systems operating
together: curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. Each is driven by its own principles.
The terms refer to the following respectively: the ‘curriculum’ contains what counts as valid
knowledge; ‘pedagogy’ is what counts as valid transmission of that knowledge; and ‘evaluation’ (what we refer to
as ‘assessment’) is what counts as a valid realization of this knowledge on the par t of the taught. In practice, the three
message systems coalesce but it is important that they are kept apart for the sake of helping our
understanding. Confusing one with the others leads to bafflement.
“Message systems” have their own principles and possibilities. Take a TV receiver as an example of a
message system. It is built in such a way that it receives, processes and transmits signals that, to the viewer,
appear as pictures and sound. While different brands of receivers offer different features, the principles of
their operation are the same and the pictures and sound differ only in detail and quality. That is, a TV receiver
23