Working backwards towards curriculum: on the curricular implications of Quality Teaching

Abstract

This essay builds from ongoing development and research work on a model of pedagogy, from New South Wales, Australia, known as the Quality Teaching model. Where international calls for the professional development and certification of teachers rely on mechanisms of credentialing, often with scant direct attention to the acts of teaching, the NSW Quality Teaching model was developed specifically to examine classroom practice and assessment with a shared, generic, analytical framework across subject areas in K-12 settings. The article presents a summary and some elaboration of the Quality Teaching model and then raises the question of just what implications for curriculum lie underneath the push for improving teaching. Using this model, for example, it is clear that many of our long standing curricular debates must be soundly re-cast if the ideals of Quality Teaching are to be taken seriously. Coming from a context where curriculum is designed and governed centrally, in very conventional terms, the curriculum implications of Quality Teaching raise a big challange for international understandings of just what is included in school curricula.

Keywords:

• teaching
• pedagogy
• curriculum

Notes

1. Throughout this article, italics will be used to denote when common phrases have been used to refer to the specific constructs of the research and development work discussed herein.

2. This particular definition and explanation is taken from Webster's unabridged Dictionary (hard-backed copy, 1987 edition), but is well known among curricular scholars.

3. Tyler's use of the term ‘evaluation’ is sometimes limited to assessing student achievements or outcomes, as opposed to the broader question of evaluating the curriculum itself. For the purposes of this discussion, both meanings are relevant.

4. Authentic Pedagogy (see Newmann 1993) is a particular construct based on a synthesis of disciplinary knowledge and analysis, substantive communication, and connectedness with the real world (outside of schooling).

5. These descriptions are not made without substantial empirical work that has to date included literally thousands of lesson observations and hundreds of assessment task codings. The NSW research was conducted by the author with a team consisting of Jennifer Gore (2001), Wendy Amosa and Tom Griffiths as co-investigators. Reports of this research include Gore (1991), Ladwig and Gore (2005) and Ladwig (2007). Readers interested in the statistical work behind this modelling see Ladwig (2007).

6. There was evidence of this in the ‘New Basics’ trial in Queensland, where the first year of the trial saw increases in Connectedness and Recognition of difference (precursors to the New South Wales dimension of Significance), but falls in Intellectual Quality, relative to prior studies – with the same teachers. This work can be accessed via: http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/