Everyday practices of teachers of English: a survey at the outset of national curriculum implementation.
Albright, James ; Knezevic, Lisa ; Farrell, Lesley 等
Introduction
At stake during periods of curriculum reform is the central and
guiding knowledge mandated by the state to be used in school education.
In the current move to a national curriculum in Australia this equates
to a change that will conceivably influence the lives of the almost 3.8
million Australians that are either school students or teachers
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012)--or, approximately one in every
6 people. As a policy change with such reach, it is not surprising there
is continuing strong opinion about the political motivation and process
of constructing a national curriculum framework (see for example
Brennan, 2011), and efforts to use its implementation as political
leverage, as in recent industrial action in Victoria (http://www.
aeuvic.asn.au/implementing_bans_oct_5.pdf). It also provides a one-off
opportunity to examine the changes in professional practices across
multiple jurisdictions and sectors as systems negotiate the
'new'.
The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project
supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and undertaken with
five industry partners. The Peopling Educational Policy (PEP) project is
investigating the implementation of the new Australian English and
Mathematics curricula through their realisation within systems and
schools, guided by the central research question, how--and in what ways
are the AC mathematics and English curricula interpreted and enacted as
they move across the education field, in systems and in schools? Using
Ball's (1997) concept of 'peopling' policy the everyday
practices of actors are privileged with a view to understanding the
responses, or social action, generated by policy change. For example,
the options available to educators and teachers may be changed or
narrowed, their decisions may be balanced against other priorities or
expectations, and/or their goals may be altered as they engage
creatively with mandated curriculum change (Ball, 1997).
In order to study as complex a phenomenon as the implementation of
a national curriculum the PEP research project draws on two
methodological approaches: Smith's (2005) institutional ethnography
and Bourdieu's (1990) field analysis. Both these approaches focus
on everyday practices and relations, without removing them from the
broader social and political context (Smith, 2005; Bourdieu, 1989).
Institutional ethnography concentrates on institutions and their work
practices to afford understanding of institutional reform, and through
its acknowledgement that institutional knowledge is textually mediated,
takes the content, interpretations and enactments of the AC policy texts
as a methodological starting point (Gerrard & Farrell, forthcoming).
Bourdieuian field analysis complements this approach by providing the
tools to study the interrelationships that shape and influence the AC
reform, facilitating its understanding as the product of competing
perspectives and discourses in the struggle between actors for
authority, legitimacy and distinction, as each vies for control over
economic, cultural, social and/or symbolic capital (Swartz, 1997).
Within this theoretical and methodological frame this paper reports
and analyses a thin slice of data from phase one of the PEP project.
This data was collected to investigate primary and secondary
teachers' perceptions in relation to a number of the everyday
practices involved in the teaching of English across Australia at the
outset of the implementation of the AC:E. The findings presented are in
relation to everyday practices across the domains of curriculum use,
planning and professional learning needs. The findings relating to a
fourth domain, the teaching of subject English, will be reported in a
follow-up paper. Although the data presented here only represents one
snap-shot in an ongoing multi-phase project, this component of the
research served to inform and support subsequent data collection. The
PEP project has now moved on to another phase of research centred on
collaborative curriculum implementation initiatives.
Implications of the AC reform for teachers
The current move to a national curriculum is part of a shift
towards centralisation and standardisation with Australian education
(see Brennan, 2011). Additionally, the AC reform is seen as being
heavily influenced by economic imperatives (Fehring & Nyland, 2012)
due to it being constructed in a particular historical moment by a
particular generation of curriculum designers (Yates & Collins,
2010). Such an economically-oriented curriculum is said to seriously
threaten recognition of the diversity of students and their school
contexts (Ditchburn, 2012a). Critique also stems from the underpinning
sense of order said to be established by key policy documentation
informing separate subject curricula, which, through its implication of
consensus and clarity, promulgates conservative, unambiguous and
prescribed knowledge (Ditchburn, 2012b). Specifically, the AC:E is
thought to cast an aura of homogeneity and uniformity through its
privileging of standard Australian English and conceptualisation of
literacy development as being orderly and sequential (Fehring &
Nyland, 2012). The contention here is that the implicit understandings
of knowledge and becoming literate within the AC:E documents used by
teachers are over-simplified and misleading.
The trend across the emerging discipline area documents of the AC,
including the AC:E, is towards a focus on content knowledge as opposed
to process knowledge, and this has been the source of much concern for
professional teacher organisations (Macken-Horarik, 2011). Curricula
that are process oriented allow teachers and students more autonomy in
their teaching and learning (Atweh & Singh, 2011). In Australia, a
process oriented approach to curricula can be traced historically to
political manoeuvring toward a national curriculum over twenty years ago
when a child-centred developmental perspective merged with the
instrumentalist economic imperatives of the day producing the KLA
structure and accompanying 'Profiles' and
'Statements' (Yates & Collins, 2010). This represented a
shift away from traditional content towards concerns about process, and
subsequently manifested in curriculum thinking conceptualising knowledge
as 'beyond' the KLAs/subject divisions, and based on
'Essential Learnings' or 'Capabilities', which
reinforced teacher independence from traditional subject content (Yates
& Collins, 2010). During the late 1990s and early 2000s this
approach to curriculum design gave rise to a more interdisciplinary and
responsive understanding of knowledge, further de-emphasising
subject-based content and giving recognition to teacher judgement in
connecting local cultural and global knowledges (Brennan, 2011). Through
not engaging at all with these issues, the AC reform risks not being in
touch with 'the changing place of knowledge in the roles of
teachers and students in a context that has [been] massively
restructured' (Brennan, 2011, pp. 266-7).
Luke (2010) focuses on the 'enacted curriculum' in
discussing the AC reform potential. This view of curriculum also casts
teachers a fairly autonomous and agential role, concentrating on what
teachers actually do and what they use to present content, ideas,
skills, and attitudes to their students (Cuban as cited in Wojcik,
2010). Despite this, Luke (2010) asserts the current dominance of a
focus on basic skills, and in particular those most likely to be tested,
within enacted curriculum, and a minimal focus on knowledge that is
either conceptually coherent or sustained. Although he makes clear the
limitation of claiming the official curriculum has any significant
effect on the enacted curriculum, Luke (2010) proposes the AC as one
means by which teachers can dislodge the current version of the enacted
curriculum in order to create the space for another version premised on
raising the intellectual bar in Australian schooling. Teachers are able
to exercise their agency by enacting a curriculum that increases or
decreases emphasis on specific topics within the mandated curriculum,
trespasses beyond the curriculum prescriptions, and by using body
language and voice inflections to discern importance or relevance for
their students (Wojick, 2010).
Brennan (2011) observes that as is the case in state-based
curricula, the AC 'remains silent on pedagogy' (p. 267)
through statements such as '[s]chools and teachers determine
pedagogical and other delivery considerations'(ACARA, 2012, p. 10)
and '[t]he Australian curriculum does not make assumptions about
how curriculum will be delivered in schools'(ACARA, 2012, p. 13).
This, Ditchburn (2012b) explains, is simply due to the Australian
ministers of education not having made pedagogy part of ACARA's
responsibility, unlike assessment and reporting. Historically, pedagogy
has been the specific professional domain of teachers, and it is thought
its mandating could lead to a lack of pedagogical sensitivity to the
local contexts in which teachers' work (Rivzi & Lingard, 2010);
however, there is resistance to separating curriculum from instruction
and pedagogy in current curriculum debate, which stresses their
interconnectedness in classroom teaching by calling attention to the
long-standing propositions of educational scholars such as Elmore and
Friere (Ditchburn, 2012b). In reflecting on teacher engagement with
curriculum currently, Thiessen (2012) identifies three common features
of teachers' work: teachers operate in an educational landscape
defined by its precariousness; teachers interpret this precariousness in
ways that can either confuse or stimulate; and teachers adapt
precariousness to create a sense of stability amidst much instability.
In discussing the AC:E and the importance it places on content,
Macken-Horarick (2011) articulates a set of challenges for the teaching
profession. Firstly, in viewing English as a discipline with its own
cohesive body of knowledge organised into the strands of language,
literature and literacy, acknowledgement of the variety of models of
English education used in classroom teaching across Australia and their
inherent contradictions and complexities is not possible. The
heterogeneous models and practices of English teaching, although not
addressed by the AC:E, require theorisation in order to build an
overarching understanding of subject English, and make its
disciplinarity both visible and accessible to students. Secondly, though
it articulates a continuity of learning over time according to the years
of schooling, thus prioritising cumulative learning, the AC:E does not
explicate any unified set of guiding principles in this matter to
facilitate teachers--what is required is the development of a
meta-language for English. Thirdly, if the AC:E is to build knowledge
that is 'portable' by it being able to be applied in new and
multiple contexts, then it is necessary for it to yield generalisations:
both conceptual knowledge and [specific] 'know-how' are
necessary according to recent research into the disciplinary demands of
English. Finally, the issue of teachers' 'buy-in' needs
to be addressed as professional doubt about the content orientation and
disciplinarity of the AC:E continues, and teacher preponderance for
process endures. A preference for process by teachers will perpetuate a
view of children as being cognitive developers rather than learners of
content, or coherent and powerful bodies of knowledge (Yates &
Collins, 2010).
Method
An online survey, informed by a number of focus group sessions and
constructed using Qualtrics survey software, was publicised across all
states and territories through professional English teacher
associations. On two occasions the project paid for information about
the survey to be published in professional journals. Additionally,
teachers were made aware of the survey through direct contact with their
schools. From each state/territory thirty primary schools and thirty
secondary schools were selected strategically so as to encourage survey
responses from all education sectors, from both urban and
regional/remote schools, and from large as well as small schools. Each
school was contacted by phone, the project was explained to relevant
school personnel, and if approval was given a follow-up email was sent
providing details of the research and the survey's web address. In
total 396 phone calls were made to selected schools with 361 follow-up
emails sent.
Teachers completed the survey over a seven month period, and took
typically about thirty minutes to respond to 108 closed and 8 open-ended
items about four domains of their practice: curriculum use, planning,
professional learning needs, and the teaching of subject English. The
survey also sought demographic information from each respondent. The
completion rate for primary teachers was sixty per cent and for
secondary teachers was eighty-one per cent.
Sample
There were 367 survey respondents--248 primary teachers and 119
secondary teachers. Just over ninety percent of the sample was female.
Teachers reported their work setting as 'metropolitan' (52%),
'regional' (34%), 'rural' (11%) or
'remote' (3%), and their work sector as government (45%),
faith-based (49%) or independent (6%).
The sample generated is clearly not random, nor is it a sample of
pure convenience. The intention of this approach to the dissemination of
the survey was not to achieve generalisable results but to secure enough
responses from a variety of locations and settings as a way of mapping
the field in relation to the domains canvassed. As the data is
self-reported, there are limitations to the interpretation of results
(De Vaus, 1995), which is organised according to the three domains of
focus in the survey being reported. Descriptive analyses of the
quantitative data and themes emerging through iterative content analysis
of the qualitative data are presented below. Quotes are chosen because
they are the most representative of the perspective being reported.
Curriculum and other resources for planning
In the planning of teaching and learning activities very similar
percentages of primary and secondary teachers of English reported using
their curriculum/ syllabus documents often. Six per cent of all teachers
reported rarely or never using their curriculum documents for either
short or long term planning. Approximately three-quarters of the sample
reported they use their curriculum documents often in long-term
planning, that is, planning for the term or year; however, for
short-term planning, focused on weekly or unit-based teaching and
learning, approximately forty-five per cent of the sample reported using
their curriculum documents often.
Across both long and short term planning more than fifty per cent
of all teachers report using the following resources often:
* Results of own assessments;
* Individual/team developed materials;
* State/territory curriculum/syllabus documents;
* Web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas;
* School developed materials.
Three out of five of these resources are generated in-school.
Therefore, apart from the official state-based curriculum/syllabus
documents and web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas, teachers
reported paying attention to resources that are highly related to their
specific school and/or class context.
Curriculum and other resources for decision-making
Eight out of every ten primary (82%) and secondary teachers (83%)
reported as likely their consultation of the official curriculum
documents when seeking to resolve a serious difference of opinion among
colleagues about what to teach. While for primary teachers the official
curriculum documents are reported as most popular in this situation
(closely followed by 'school/ class assessment results'), for
secondary teachers 'experienced colleagues' are reported as
the most popular, ahead of official curriculum documents. Two of the top
four resources identified for 'likely' use to decide what to
teach and resolve the dispute are school-based personnel. Less than
three in ten surveyed teachers identified 'regional/state support
personnel', 'professional association
personnel/materials', or 'textbooks' (only in the case of
primary teachers) as likely to be used. Apart from the official
curriculum documents, teachers' reported use of resources generally
falls for resources that are not school-based.
Implementing curriculum
Primary and secondary teachers identify the same top three factors
as substantially informing their curriculum implementation.
According to the survey data, the more the factors are aligned with
perspectives of students based on their individuality as opposed to
their belonging to non-dominant cultural/social groupings or school
factors, the more these factors are reported as influencing
teachers' curriculum implementation. Teachers' curriculum
implementation is reported as being largely informed by differentiating
students according to particular individual qualities. The factors
identified as having substantial impact on curriculum implementation by
most teachers overall are:
* Range of student capabilities;
* Special needs of students;
* Aspirations of students.
Planning to teach specific activities
In setting out how they would use a set of activities teachers
nearly always outlined in greater or lesser detail the pedagogy they
would employ. Predominantly, this constituted reference to the specific
procedures teachers would undertake, the level of support they would
provide and/or the sequential teaching phases.
I would provide a model response and then some joint construction
then ask them to work independently with scaffolding. (Secondary
teacher)
Would use the curriculum cycle to work towards the final product,
with building the field, text deconstruction, joint construction and
then independent construction. I would also pre and post test assess the
children's writing of information texts to determine their needs.
(Primary teacher)
We will review some of the magazine articles/informative texts on
the same topic. As a class we will try to do all the steps required for
activity one (modelled teaching). Will group students according to
ability and do again with them (guided teaching). Will ask students to
have a go of doing the activity on their own (independent teaching).
(Primary teacher)
In this survey item there is a difference between the responses of
primary teachers and secondary teachers: primary teachers are relatively
more focussed on their pedagogy than secondary teachers, and secondary
teachers are relatively more focussed on the textual qualities demanded
by the type of text being constructed than the primary teachers.
The activity would be a novel study and I would use a different
novel for each of my reading groups looking at the skills appropriate to
their levels. (Primary teacher)
Lots of modelling of this activity would be required before my
students could do it independently. (Primary teacher)
I would use this activity after as an assessment task completing
the novel as a class text. I would have taught characterisation, text,
structure, narrative structure, and specific grammatical features such
as dialogue so that students had an understanding of how they should
write the epilogue. (Secondary teacher)
I would do some reading and discussion of the conclusion to the
novel to set the context. I would then give some input on the purposes
and structures of an epilogue. I would ensure that work had been
completed around characterisation and the importance of consistency in a
text. Finally I would give a reminder lesson about the punctuation of
dialogue and how it might be used to build character and tone, followed
by some scaffolding of a narrative text form. This scaffold would need
to include some support for writing cohesively. (Secondary teacher)
Professional learning needs
Over eighty per cent of surveyed primary and secondary teachers
identified 'Developing and assessing students' fluency in
speaking, listening, reading and writing' and 'Developing and
assessing student's knowledge and use of grammar, spelling and
punctuation' as 'essential or 'very important' for
professional learning for teachers of English. Over eighty per cent of
primary teachers also identified 'Developing and assessing student
understanding of the curriculum content' and 'Incorporating
general capabilities' as 'essential' or 'very
important'. The two topics that received the lowest percentage of
responses ('Developing and assessing students' appreciation of
quality literature in English' and 'Developing and assessing
students' appreciation of Asian and Indigenous texts') had the
same percentage of responses (60% and 41% respectively) across primary
and secondary teachers, suggesting uniformity of opinion across all
surveyed teachers of English about the relative unimportance of these
two topics in professional learning during the time of the survey.
In response to the open question, as a consequence of the
Australian Curriculum: English, what would be the most helpful form of
support for you, the most common answer across both primary and
secondary teachers focused on professional development (PD).
Professional development courses showing how we can best adapt our
teaching and programming to be compliant with Aust Curriculum.
(Secondary teacher)
Professional development on implementing the Australian curriculum
at a site level--addressing specific needs of site students while
addressing the requirements of the Aust curriculum. (Primary teacher) PD
on task design that meets the content descriptions. PD on assessing and
standards. (Secondary teacher)
Many teachers were fairly specific about the nature of this PD,
stating that it needed to not only unpack the documents in general but
also provide opportunities to adapt existing teaching and programming at
school level. The responses of both primary and secondary teachers
identify the dual challenge of understanding the change to a national
curriculum and the need for site-specific implementation (i.e. upgrading
of existing practices at school-level to both fulfil new curriculum
requirements and meet the specific needs of the school population). Some
teachers made the point that there was little benefit in PD about the
curriculum documents without 'local' contextualisation.
Online support also emerged from the responses of both primary and
secondary teachers as a very helpful form of support. The benefits of
online assistance for teachers were the (ease of) access to resources
and the support role it could play after PD sessions. Resources emerged
as the next most important form of support. Sample/exemplar/effective
programs and units of work and assessment tasks were the most popular
resources to which teachers referred specifically. Time was also
identified as key to supporting curriculum implementation, and was far
more of a concern for primary teachers than for secondary teachers in
their responses to this survey item.
Discussion
In their everyday practice, teachers of English report turning to a
range of resources. Examining teachers' perceptions about the
relative authority of resources is helpful in building understanding of
how teachers' work is informed, and the possible degree of
'coordination between an individual's experience and the
institutional relations with which they engage' (Nichols &
Griffith, 2009, p. 245, emphasis in original). In reporting resources
that are (often/likely) used in planning and decision-making, surveyed
English teachers favoured 'in-school' resources overall. This
could suggest that in fundamental aspects of their practice primary and
secondary teachers pay considerable attention to resources that are
highly related to their school and/ or class context. The authority
attributed to resources reported by teachers of English in the survey
appears to fall away when the resources are not school-based. While this
obviously needs further investigation, one tentative proposition that
emerges from these results is that both in-school material resources and
in-school personnel may play an important role in the way teachers
negotiate their planning and decision-making. When considering the
implementation of a new curriculum across Australia, this could suggest
that the new curriculum documents alone may not have the desired impact
on teachers' planning and decision-making for teaching and
learning, and therefore, stakeholders in-school and out-of-school--may
benefit from considering school-level (material and human) resources as
concurrent drivers of curriculum change. This suggestion is being
revisited during subsequent phases of the research in light of
experience with school-based implementation initiatives and the
demonstrated in-practice authority of specific resources.
The reported importance of school-level resources in teachers'
everyday practice may also offer potential in addressing the minimal
engagement of some teachers of English with the official curriculum.
While there is little comprehensive knowledge about teachers' use
of official curriculum documents (Luke, 2010), the survey does indicate
engaging with the official curriculum may be an issue for some teachers,
with approximately six per cent of the sample reporting rarely or never
using their official curriculum documents. We suggest this finding could
be fairly conservative due to the likelihood of teachers volunteering to
complete the survey being those fairly interested in and/or committed to
their profession and thus, perhaps not constituting a representative
sample. There may in fact be a problem with use of official curriculum
for a small percentage of teachers that could be addressed through use
of supporting in-school resources, if further evidence indicates the
relative importance of in-school resources for teachers of English.
Given the textually mediated nature of institutional knowledge
(Smith, 1999), it would appear there is a case for developing a far more
nuanced understanding of how the range of in-school texts teachers turn
to in their practice intersect and/or align, and how these dynamics can
be harnessed to support conditions for change. This is being undertaken
in subsequent phases of the PEP project through close examination of
teacher's use of texts during implementation of the AC:E. In
addition, the importance of in-school personnel in teacher's
decision-making reminds us that 'texts require someone who is able
to actualise them as instructions for action, and then move these (or
consecutive texts) on to the next someone, somewhere, whose reading and
action will continue the textually-mediated relation' (Nichols
& Griffith, 2009, p. 241). In subsequent data analysis, Bourdieusian
field analysis is fleshing out the survey's initial findings by
exploring the way teachers are called upon as authorities and the
struggle between teachers with different roles and responsibilities as
they attend to curriculum change.
In relation to teachers' implementation of the curriculum,
teachers reported factors that are closely related to their
students' individual qualities as being more influential than other
factors. In this survey item, teachers' responses suggest that they
perceive authority as being located in-school and deriving from
students. When implementing the curriculum, teachers reported being
predominantly concerned about individualising curriculum knowledge to
meet the varying needs of their students. This perspective, which is
being examined further in subsequent phases of the project, may reflect
the perception of teachers that students should be valued as individuals
as they engage with the curriculum, pointing to the discretionary and
relatively autonomous curriculum practices of teachers that have emerged
over recent decades (Brennan, 2011).
The survey results invite us not only to consider the significance
of in-school factors on teachers' work, but also teachers'
reported privileging of the process of teaching over subject/discipline
content. As primary and secondary teachers reported being more concerned
about their pedagogy, or the process of teaching, than any other aspect
of planning to teach specific activities in the survey, subsequent data
collection in the project is seeking evidence of this across activities
being planned as part of curriculum implementation initiatives. Clearly
there is much work still to be done but if, as the data suggests,
in-school factors and 'process' wield significant influence in
English teachers' everyday work, it could be suggested that the
teaching of English is a very context-specific practice. While on one
hand this may affirm a perspective of teaching that positions teachers
as fairly autonomous as they develop teaching and learning activities to
suit local practices (and possibly school culture), on the other hand,
it may suggest the possibility of English teaching being a somewhat
restricted phenomenon, allowing minimal external 'input'--for
example, only official curriculum documents and web-based curriculum
materials and lesson ideas were reported as relatively authoritative
'external' sources for teacher planning in survey items
related to teachers' planning.
Although teachers were not specifically asked about assessment at
any time throughout the survey, it is clear this is something front and
centre of their thinking. In asking teachers about their curriculum use,
planning and professional learning needs, assessment was a central
concern for both primary and secondary teachers but more so for
secondary teachers. Firstly, when asked about the detail of how they
would use activities relating to specific areas of the AC:E, teachers
made explicit connection between the given activities and assessment.
Secondly, in identifying the most helpful form of support for the
effective implementation of the new curriculum, teachers mentioned the
need for sample assessment tasks to be made available. It is clear that
assessment is a critical component of teachers' work that warrants
attention; however, the frequency and strength of the conceptual links
made between the survey items and assessment by teachers across the data
highlights the (increasing) role standardised testing plays in mediating
teachers' work (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2011).
Conclusion
The PEP phase one survey of teachers of English has shed light on
the reported nature of some of their everyday practices. Although the
sample size was reasonably large, the findings need to be treated with
caution due to the constitution of the sample and self-reporting bias.
Also, the survey results may not be supported in subsequent phases of
the project involving analysis of actual in-school practices as part of
school implementation initiatives. The main contribution of the
survey's results has been to provide additional direction for phase
two data collection and analysis, and provoke initial and tentative
exploration of related implications for the teaching of English during
national curriculum implementation.
During the current period of implementation of a new national
curriculum, recognising the intricate specificities of teachers'
work within education institutions may have potential. What holds
authority for English teachers may help explain why top-down change
initiatives will not follow a clear, linear progression (Priestly,
Miller, Barrett and Wallace, 2011) from the state bureaucracy to
jurisdictions and systems, and then to schools and into classrooms.
Understanding the resources favoured by teachers in their everyday
practices, may present opportunities for injecting the 'new':
in the present circumstances this could mean using in-school resources
to embed the AC:E within the school context. In addition, understanding
how context-specific and constrained English teachers' everyday
work may be, could indicate a capacity to diminish the potential of the
new national curriculum in bringing to students new and powerful
knowledges, and provide them with capital that is valued and
'portable' (Macken-Horarick, 2011). This may cause teachers of
English to reflect on what influences their everyday practice, and/or
encourage them to 'open up' to other influences to enrich
their teaching--such as the important question of 'which groups are
granted access to privileged and privileging forms of knowledge, and
[can] thereby reap the benefits of schooling in terms of life choices
and trajectories' (Atweh & Singh, 2011, p. 192).
Acknowledgements
This research, part of the Peopling Education Policy project, is
funded by the Australian Research Council (LP110100062) with additional
funding provided by the NSW Department of Education and Training,
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, Catholic Education Office
Melbourne and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting
Authority. The project is a collaboration between Monash University,
Australian Catholic University, University of Sydney, University of
Technology Sydney, University of Newcastle and the University of
Melbourne, and the paper's content is the responsibility of the
authors and the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views
of the universities or the partners.
The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their
detailed and insightful comments on this article.
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James Albright and Lisa Knezevic
University of Newcastle
Lesley Farrell
University of Technology, Sydney
James Albright is the Professor/Director of the Educational
Research Institute, Newcastle (ERIN) in the Faculty of Education and
Arts, University of Newcastle. His publications include an edited
volume, Pierre Bourdieu and Literacy Education (with Allan Luke,
Routledge, 2008) and a co-authored book, Composing a Care of the Self: A
critical history of writing assessment in secondary English education
(with David Carlson, Sense, 2012).
Lisa Knezevic is a postgraduate researcher in the School of
Education, University of Newcastle. Her research focuses on
multiliteracies and other globalised literacy discourses and their
articulation in particular national and educational contexts. Her wider
research interests concern the use of analytic and methodological
frameworks to enhance our understanding of education generally, and
literacy and English education in particular.
Lesley Farrell is Professor and Associate Dean Research in the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney.
Her research focus is on the impacts of globalisation on local
workforces and work practices and on knowledge mobilisation across
spatial and temporal domains. Her most recent books include Making
Knowledge Common: Literacy and Knowledge at work (Peter Lang), Educating
the Global Workforce: Knowledge, knowledge work and knowledge workers
(Routledge, with Tara Fenwick), English Education in South Asia: from
policy to pedagogy (Cambridge Universityy Press with Singh and Giri) and
Knowledge Mobilization and Educational Research: Politics, Languages and
responsibilities Routledge with Tara Fenwick).
Table 1: Resources used 'often ' in long-term planning expressed as
percentages
Primary %
1 Results of own assessments 80%
2 State/territory curriculum/syllabus documents 73%
3 School-based assessment results 69%
4 Web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas 58%
5 Individual/team developed materials 53%
6 Commercial publications or products, e.g. textbooks 48%
7 School developed materials 45%
8 State/territory developed support materials 45%
9 NAPLAN test items/results 35%
10 Australian Curriculum documents 33%
11 State assessment items/results 21%
12 Australian Curriculum support materials 15%
13 Professional association materials 13%
Secondary %
1 Individual/team developed materials 81%
2 State/territory curriculum/syllabus documents 76%
3 Results of own assessments 73%
4 School developed materials 52%
5 Commercial publications or products, e.g. textbooks 49%
6 School-based assessment results 46%
7 Web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas 42%
8 State/territory developed support materials 38%
9 Australian Curriculum documents 35%
10 State assessment items/results 23%
11 Professional association materials 22%
12 NAPLAN test items/results 19%
13 Australian Curriculum support materials 15%
Table 2: Resources used 'often' in short-term planning expressed as
percentages
Primary %
1 Results of own assessments 74%
2 Individual/team developed materials 64%
3 Web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas 57%
4 School-based assessment results 48%
5 School developed materials 48%
6 State/territory curriculum/syllabus documents 47%
7 Commercial publications or products, e.g. textbooks 44%
8 State/territory developed support materials 29%
9 Australian Curriculum documents 22%
10 NAPLAN test items/results 20%
11 State assessment items/results 14%
12 Australian Curriculum support materials 13%
13 Professional association materials 10%
Secondary %
1 Individual/team developed materials 82%
2 Results of own assessments 62%
3 School developed materials 53%
4 Web-based curriculum materials and lesson ideas 46%
5 Commercial publications or products, e.g. textbooks 45%
6 State/territory curriculum/syllabus documents 43%
7 School-based assessment results 29%
8 Australian Curriculum documents 22%
9 State/territory developed support materials 22%
10 NAPLAN test items/results 16%
11 State assessment items/results 14%
12 Australian Curriculum support materials 12%
13 Professional association materials 12%
Table 3: Resources 'likely' to be used to resolve a difference among
colleagues regarding what to teach, expressed as percentages.
Primary %
1 Official curriculum documents 82%
2 School or class assessment results 81%
3 Experienced colleagues 76%
4 School-based curriculum leader 76%
5 External assessment results, e.g. NAPLAN 53%
6 State curriculum support materials 45%
7 School-produced curriculum materials 43%
8 Regional or state support personnel 27%
9 Textbooks 27%
10 Professional association personnel or materials 17%
Secondary %
1 Experienced colleagues 90%
2 Official curriculum documents 83%
3 School or class assessment results 78%
4 School-based curriculum leader 71%
5 School-produced curriculum materials 53%
6 State curriculum support materials 51%
7 External assessment results, e.g. NAPLAN 44%
8 Textbooks 41%
9 Professional association personnel or materials 27%
10 Regional or state support personnel 25%
Table 4: Factors influencing curriculum
implementation expressed as percentages
Factor Primary Secondary
Special needs of students 67% 57%
Socio-economic disadvantage of students 25% 31%
High proportion of indigenous students 16% 21%
Language background of students 29% 27%
Cultural diversity of students 23% 22%
Rural/regional/remote school location 17% 17%
Range of student capabilities 84% 80%
Community expectations 32% 23%
Aspirations of students 53% 57%
Table 5: Topics identified as 'essential' or 'very important' in
professional learning for teachers of English expressed as
percentages
Topic Primary Secondary
1 Finding teaching and learning activities 78% 64%
that match the official curriculum
content descriptions
2 Incorporating general capabilities 85% 64%
3 Developing and assessing student 89% 76%
understanding of the curriculum content
4 Developing and assessing students' 91% 83%
fluency in speaking, listening, reading
and writing
5 Developing and assessing students' 68% 66%
knowledge of English language variation
and change
6 Developing and assessing student's 87% 82%
knowledge and use of grammar, spelling
and punctuation
7 Developing and assessing students' 41% 41%
appreciation of Asian and Indigenous
texts
8 Developing and assessing students' 60% 60%
appreciation of quality literature in
English
9 Developing and assessing students' use 77% 67%
and design of multi-modal texts
