Curriculum
5.3 TEACHERS' CURRICULUM RESPONSIBILITIES
Our approach to teachers' responsibilities has been based on three initial considerations. Firstly, we are convinced that good decisions by teachers are a key to improved learning. Secondly, we believe that teachers cannot be held accountable for matters over which they have no (or insufficient) control. Thirdly, submissions have almost invariably argued for a strong central role. In effect, the submissions say that it is not up to individual teachers or schools to decide what essential knowledge, skills and understandings students need in order to be equipped for the next stage of their lives.
Teachers cannot be expected to "know and do it all". Curriculum decision making is far too complex. And besides, equity issues necessitate a common framework for all schools.
5.3.1 Some Fundamentals
A teacher's fundamental responsibility is to assist children to learn. A teacher's fundamental conviction should be that all children are capable of learning. But in practice, teaching is a contradictory activity. What "works" for some children does not
"work" for others. Teachers cannot guarantee that because they teach something (arrange a learning environment in a particular way) every child will learn what was intended. Learning and teaching are such that the efforts of teachers and children are greeted by less than complete success. Intent and outcome rarely match completely.
Many reasons are put forward for this, including:
• individual differences among children and their circumstances;
• the complexity of the material and concepts to be mastered;
• learning processes and teaching methodology; and
• the way curriculum content is chosen, organised and sequenced.
The challenge to match intent with outcome requires both curriculum content and delivery decisions. The key content decision is what children are expected to learn. The key curriculum delivery decisions are how the chosen content should be organised, when and how should it be presented, what assistance the teacher needs to ensure every chance of success for the children, and what will stand as evidence that learning has occurred.
These are key decisions because they have a direct impact on children. They are the very substance of improved teaching and learning throughout the system. They affect the quality of children's most basic experiences of schooling, day by day and year by year. They are decisions which have to be well made if the expectations of all concerned parties are to be met through teachers' planning and their handling of the hurly-burly of classroom interaction.
Who is responsible for these decisions? History suggests a spectrum of possible answers. At one extreme the answer is simply "the teacher". At the other extreme is the notion of the "teacher-proof curriculum", in which almost all curriculum decisions are made by "experts" in closely-prescribed syllabuses, textbooks, workbooks, worksheets and achievement tests. In reality, most schools and school systems adopt a position between these extremes: that is, certain aspects of curriculum content and delivery are decided in advance, leaving teachers to decide other details. The image is one of "they"
decide some things and the rest is up to "us".
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This arrangement seems to have suited most people for a long time. Teachers' curriculum responsibilities are defined around prior decisions ("givens") taken by the Director-General, the school decision-making group and the principal. Teachers accept, we believe, that a school system is not a system if each school "does its own thing" and that a school has to be more than a collection of autonomous classrooms. When these givens are backed up by support services and guidance (syllabuses, teachers guides, students notes), then so much the better. Teachers generally respect sound "pre- digested" curriculum decisions and advice. Provided it helps them do what is already a tough-enough job, they welcome such support.
This is fine until the responsibilities of teachers come into conflict with their convictions and the results their children are achieving. Teachers instinctively seek to balance their responsibilities and beliefs with the realities. Teaching and learning, while tough at times, can also lead to tremendous personal satisfaction. When teachers cannot achieve this balance, something is wrong. If teachers are having difficulty because of decisions made outside their control, it is time to take stock of who is taking these decisions and why.
5.3.2 The Current Arrangements
The dominant feature of the current arrangements is "the syllabus". Syllabuses are the recognised way in which teachers' curriculum responsibilities are communicated throughout the system.
Each syllabus has objectives (sometimes called "aims" or "goals"), content (a structured selection of relevant subject matter), processes (teaching and learning methodology) and assessment. Syllabuses bring together these four aspects of curriculum. Teachers can make the reasonable assumption that their responsibility is to do a good job of covering the subject matter, using the methodology advised by the syllabus writers. If this is done, the objectives should be met. The more closely the syllabus couples objectives, content and teaching methodology, the more likely (and reasonaЫe) it is that teachers will make this assumption (why else would the syllabus writers have gone to so much trouble?). In addition, it is an assumption that is not challenged by the prevailing approach to assessment. This is because children's achievement is assessed and expressed in a different language from syllabus objectives: numbers and letter-grades have to be compared with complex sentences describing the objectives. The syllabus is taught and each child's learning is compared with others in the class to give comparative grades or marks. The resulting rank order is organised by numbers (usually percentages or marks out of 10) or letter-grades (A, В, C, D and F). Teachers' fundamental conviction that all children are capable of learning can be squared-off by accepting that some are more capable than others or have more fortunate circumstances at home. Syllabus delivery can become (and perhaps has in too many cases) a very routine process.
In this model, teachers' accountability is seen in terms of "covering the syllabus" or
"presenting material to children". A teacher may say "I taught the content of the syllabus, using the recommended processes, so the reasons for the children's performance must be due, logically, to the syllabus". This is tantamount to saying that the syllabus developers should be held accountable (at least in part) for the performance of the children!
5.3.3 What Kind of Framework Might be Better?
Each syllabus (or its parts) could be placed at a different point between the extremes of our hypothetical spectrum of "teacher" versus "teacher-proof" decision making.
Syllabuses vary considerably in their specification of objectives, subject matter, processes and assessment. This is not so much a criticism as a reflection of the philosophy, beliefs and best practices of the time each one was developed (the social studies syllabus, for example, is nearly 20 years old). It is a great credit to teachers, most of whom have to deal with more than one syllabus (primary teachers have to deal with up to seven or eight) that they have taken this variability in their stride.
One way forward for us might have been to analyse all the syllabuses to see if a good balance has been struck between central specification and the discretion left to teachers. In theory, this would have allowed us to judge whether each syllabus has the
"right" amount of devolution for objectives, content, processes and assessment.
We have not done this, for three reasons. Firstly, many teachers are achieving fine results with existing syllabuses. Secondly, it would have been a mammoth task. Thirdly, we saw what we regarded as a potentially more fruitful approach. This was to cut through the complexity by asking one question: for what ought it be reasonable to ask any teacher to be accountable? Our answer has been: a teacher should be able to demonstrate accountability by assessing children's performance in relation to expected outcomes;
and indicating if this is satisfactory under the circumstances; and what action (if any) is being taken to improve it.
We believe most teachers would feel comfortable with this answer, provided we dealt honestly with its implications. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to these matters and acknowledges the importance of the following:
• Learning outcomes (expected and actual) should be the centre of attention, but asking teachers to be accountable for what they do about improving outcomes requires a reassessment of teachers' curriculum responsibilities;
• If teachers' accountability is to involve what they do to improve outcomes ("ends") they must be given the flexibility to decide the "means" - to deny teachers this flexibility (and the support they need to exercise it wisely) would be to make our proposed accountability requirement grossly unfair.
• Settling the question of teachers' curriculum responsibilities in this area is an inescapable matter for any system with ambitions to improve learning through devolution.
We believe the way forward is to give clear responsibility to teachers for children's achievement, including greater control of the curriculum processes.
RECOMMENDATION 6
That teachers be responsible for:
i) implementing learning programs in accordance with statements of expected outcomes, issued under the authority of the Director-General of Education, and the school's curriculum policies;
ii) deciding the appropriate teaching and learning processes for their programs;
iii) monitoring and evaluating children's performance in relation to the expected outcomes of their learning programs;
iv) analysing barriers to learning and developing strategies to overcome them; and
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v) demonstrating their accountability to parents and principals by reporting children's performance in relation to expected outcomes and the action they intend to take, where necessary, to improve that performance.
These responsibilities place obligations on principals and the Director-General to remove barriers to their being met. Teachers will not accept this recommendation without a commitment to a clear and achievable implementation plan by the system.
Teachers' responsibilities should be linked to a framework which maps children's entire schooling. The job of each teacher (supported by the school as a whole) within such a framework is to match students, outcomes, available resources, local expectations and pedagogy to produce the highest possible levels of achievement.
A framework which does this well has the potential to:
• focus teachers' practice on assisting children's progress towards known outcomes;
• orient the expectations of children, parents, teachers and principals to the common learning outcomes;
• enhance teachers' professionalism by providing them with greater flexibility;
• provide teachers with a better diagnostic tool for children's learning; and
• provide a common language for assessing and reporting children's progress across all curriculum areas, classrooms and schools.
We stress that we are not rejecting current (or future) use of Departmental syllabuses.
Rather, we are stressing that teachers should not be required to use them if they are convinced there are better ways to meet their responsibilities to children, the school and the system'. In this way syllabus selection should become a more deliberative decision by teachers and principals. In the final section of this chapter we revisit teachers'