A Model for Sustainable Curriculum Review and Renewal

Wednesday 3 July: 5:30pm – 7:00pm, poster session

Presenters

Dr Thanh Nga Nguyen
Western Sydney University, Australia
Angie.Nguyen@westernsydney.edu.au

John Juriansz
Western Sydney University, Australia
J.Juriansz@westernsydney.edu.au

Overview

Australian universities share a responsibility to proactively respond to trends by intelligently adapting teaching and learning to equip students with the skills and higher-order knowledge required to be prepared for the future of work. The magnitude, complexity and pace of disruptive change has obligated universities to foster a culture of adaptability and commitment to change. While there are numerous pedagogical innovations, transforming the curriculum to transform the teaching and learning is a vital part. Various parties contribute to this process and the effect each party exerts is different. The well-known conventional ways of thinking about curriculum innovation, ‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’ and ‘partnership’ approaches have been used widely. However, to meet the challenges attributable to the pace of curriculum reform, it is imperative to identify a systematic, sustainable and collaborative process capable of producing high quality pedagogical innovations that transform teaching and learning practice. This work-in-progress study seeks to describe the essential elements of a sustainable curriculum renewal model. Employing an autobiography methodology, the study analyses data collected from the researcher’s journal and observational notes relating to three Curriculum Renewal Projects involving three distinct participant groups from within the School of Education between 2018 and 2019. Consistent with the University and School of Education’s objective to render the curriculum increasingly flexible by enhancing sharable course components across initial teacher education courses, three curriculum working groups consisting of school leaders, content experts (Unit Coordinators) and a Curriculum Advisor were assigned with the task of reviewing the existing units and considering the design of a single unit consisting of common components with differentiations for each program. Drawing upon theory of practice architectures (Mahon, Kemmis, Francisco & Lloyd, 2016), this study presents a sustainable curriculum development process model suitable for both small-scale and large-scale curriculum reform projects.

References

Mahon K, Kemmis S, Francisco S, Lloyd A. (2016).  Practice theory and the theory of practice architectures. In Mahon K, Francisco S, Kemmis S (Eds.), Exploring Education and Professional Practice: Through the Lens of Practice Architectures (pp. 1-30). Singapore: Springer.

Presentation topic

Poster session