K-12 Curriculum Conference, Melbourne, May 6th – 7th, 2015.

As an interested educator I decided to take a flight to Melbourne to attend the K-12 Curriculum Conference to find out just what people who are leaders in the sphere of education have made of the changes recommended by the Curriculum Review. The stories were many and varied and definitely showed how people were particularly biased to one specific aspect or another in their communication of how the review would affect implementation of the Australian Curriculum, including theories of pedagogy and the means of gaining access to the required resources. The cross-curriculum perspectives were high on the agenda as were the phase 2 and 3 learning area implementation, crowding of the curriculum in primary schools and how to cater for a wide range of students in a wide range of schools. It is my understanding that many of the delegates who were attending this conference were from fee-paying private schools – I think it’s a great pity that lower socio-economic government schools and remote community schools were under-represented at this particular conference. I also think that there were some controversial topics which were brought out into the open and discussed respectfully with the presenters in the organised panels or at the end of their individual presentations. The one thing I have taken away from this conference is that there is not, as yet, a National Curriculum. The states have firm control over how, when and what is implemented via their own educational portals. I have my own thoughts on how to deal with overcrowded curriculum through integration and project based learning – but then, that’s the way I prefer to run the learning environment for my students when I possibly can! My notes from the presentations, with some added links for further information and a link to the slideshare presentations, can be found here.

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