English remains the only subject mandated throughout the years of schooling in Australia. The compulsory nature of this subject reflects its responsibility for the personal, and literate, development of students. Literature has often been charged with the social and moral dimensions of English. Increasingly, in Australia and elsewhere, literature…

This paper reports on the second stage of an international study exploring the future of secondary school music education. Within a discursive context that tends to regard music education as failing to meet the needs of many students, we instigated a three-step Delphi study to capture views from educators across the English-speaking world.…

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated…

The "Australian Curriculum: History" has emerged out of a neoliberal federal education policy landscape. This is a policy landscape where pragmatic and performative, rather than pedagogic concerns are clearly foregrounded, and this has implications for curriculum development and implementation. A useful way to conceptualise the features,…

Innovation is essential for the education sector. The ways in which curriculum decision making is organised reflects different implicit approaches on how educational systems pertain to promote innovation in education. Curriculum holds an outstanding place when seeking to promote innovation in education, as it reflects the vision for education by…

Assessment practices that aim to promote both quality and equity may be compromised in a higher education market where students are consumers and grades the currency exchanged for measures of success. In such a climate, academics report feeling pressured to make course content and assessment less challenging in order to obtain positive student…

Australia has a state-based educational system. In some of these states, outdoor education exists as part of the formal accredited secondary school curriculum. In this paper I analyse the content of these senior secondary school outdoor courses as a means to help delineate and describe the body of knowledge of outdoor education. I suggest outdoor…

Review of curriculum documents compared technology education in six countries in terms of rationale/content, national goals, importance of technology, and implementation goals. Systematic analysis using the dimensions of objectives, method, and content in relation to society, schools, and individuals found significant cross-national differences.…

Describes a course designed for students to gain knowledge with a degree of relevance by providing opportunities for student appreciation of the physics associated with features in everyday life. (GS)

The questions of the range of appropriate offerings for the secondary curriculum is a subject of much debate in Australia. The legitimacy of women's studies is examined, as well as ways in which women's studies might be offered in the secondary school curriculum. (RM)

In the Australian state of Victoria, control of academic curriculum has shifted from the bureaucrats to locally based teacher networks and statewide associations which limit subject scope and teaching styles. However, curriculum has not changed significantly, indicating that institutional reforms do not necessarily result in radical alterations of…

Describes a two-phase program in which phase one provides the basic concepts and skills for later science study and phase two provides a real choice of science units to suit the needs of students. (GS)

Described is an integrated physical science course being developed for Australian high schools. Included are the course structure, explanation of three major units of the course, and the basic concerns prompting the development of the new course. (SL)

Described is the science course syllabus utilized for secondary science education in Queensland, Australia. Included are educational aims, course design, and assessment procedures. (SL)

The analysis of a film is proposed as an alternative for one of the two required text analyses in the French examination for the Higher School Certificate in Australia. This entails the addition of film courses to the general curriculum. (Text is in French.) (TL)