Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 28

Designing the Classroom Curriculum
each KLA.
In the 1990s curriculum as a framework gained prominence throughout the developed world and Australia. In
this approach, the curriculum authority and its documentation sets the objectives and provides broad
guidelines for curriculum planning by agencies, schools and teachers. The curriculum framework document
focuses on subject specific areas and “describes the overall aims of schooling, more specific goals of
education, and objectives of (such) teaching subjects” (Sahlberg, 2006, p.4).
The notion that curriculum is a framework meshed with the idea that content selection and teaching
decisions were best left to schools and teachers. The curriculum framework decision making premise
mirrored Government decentralisation programs of the time, where schools became self-managing through
a program of school-based management (Caldwell, 1994).
In more recent times Outcomes Based Curriculum and its successor, Standards Based Curriculum dominates state
curricula 7 . The arrival of the outcomes-based curriculum signalled a movement from what the teacher
teaches to what the students actually learn, from objectives to outcomes and a belief that all children can
learn. The key idea is that “it guides the planning of teaching by more precise descriptions of intended
learning outcomes” (Sahlberg, 2006, p.5). Put simply the curriculum contains descriptive outcome
statements that become the focus of what the teacher aims to achieve in students in specific learning subjects.
The most important assumption is that teachers possess the knowledge and skill background to provide
substance to the achievement of the outcome. On closer inspection, one can see that “outcomes” can be
almost anything or as numerous as the curriculum developers decide to identify in their documentation and
may include knowledge or processes. It is this chameleon-like nature of Outcomes-Based Curricula that has
rightly attracted a host of critics. That is, outcomes can be specified as processes just as well as specific
knowledge components and they can be few or numerous. Achieving a practical number of meaningful
outcomes that have value as learning outcomes for different audiences is not an easy task. The notion of a
‘crowded curriculum’ has its genesis in contexts such as this.
The standards-based curriculum is described as the next generation of Outcomes-Based Curriculum in that
criteria are set for what students should know and be able to do at differing junctures of their schooling and
at different levels of capability. Such standards become benchmarks for student performance and in turn
can be used as indicators of system, school and teacher performance. The rationale is that a set of content
specific standards provides curriculum planning and pedagogical strategy guidelines for achieving and
evaluating student learning. The system, school or teacher is required to report the success or otherwise of
each student’s performance against each standard. The National Assessment Program of Literacy and
Numeracy (NAPLAN) had its genesis in the standards based curriculum