CER Educational Conversation: The Antecedents of the NSW Curriculum Review: an introduction to the NSW curriculum style

Event Name
CER Educational Conversation: The Antecedents of the NSW Curriculum Review: an introduction to the NSW curriculum style
Date
18 June 2019
Time
12:00 pm - 01:30 pm
Location
Bankstown Campus

Address (Room): BA 3.G.54 or zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/184635050

Description

In May 2018, the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and the Minister for Education, Rob Stokes, announced a review of the NSW curriculum. The Minister hailed it as “the first comprehensive shake-up of the Kindergarten to Year 12 curriculum since 1989”. How did reformers in that era grapple with the issues today confronting the NSW Curriculum Review? Using the issues prominent in the Terms of Reference of the Review as a lens this paper examines key reforms from that period such as the raising of the NSW school leaving age in 2010. Drawing on historical and policy analyses and interviews with key actors, this study concludes that reform has been shaped by NSW’s own distinctive curriculum style. This style has three principal characteristics: an emphasis on the centrality of academic knowledge; an insistence on rigour and competitive assessment; and a preference at the secondary level for conventional subject matter disciplines rather than an integrated or "interdisciplinary" curriculum. PRESENTER. Dr John Hughes was a senior researcher in the New South Wales Department of Education, John is an authority on the history of Australian schooling reform and reformers. His reputation as a scholar in this area was established with his biography of Sir Harold Wyndham, Director-General of the NSW Department of Education from 1952 to 1968. His publications include the book, Reform and Resistance in NSW Public Education: six attempts at major reform, 1905-1995 (NSW Dept. Education and Training 2008) with Dr P. Brock. Recently he completed a background paper for the NSW Curriculum Review that examined the history of the NSW curriculum since 1989. John’s next undertaking is a biography of Alexander Mackie the first principal of Sydney Teachers’ College and also Professor of Education at the University of Sydney. Dr. Hughes is currently an Adjunct Fellow in the School of Education at Western Sydney University.

Speakers: Dr John Hughes

Web page: https://uws.zoom.us/j/184635050

Contact
Name: Brian Dalton

b.dalton@westernsydney.edu.au

Phone: 02 4736 0308

School / Department: Education