Curriculum in Action
The concurrent sessions of the conference will be held from 12.10pm – 1.10pm on Tuesday 13 November. Delegates are only expected to attend one Curriculum in Action session during the allotted time.
Selecting a Curriculum in Action session
All conference registrants will receive an email requiring them to indicate their preferred Curriculum in Action sessions. Registrants should use the list of sessions below to determine their preferences. Registrants should note that their preferences only indicate the sessions they would most prefer to attend and do not guarantee a place in a session of their choice. All registrants will be notified of their allocated Curriculum in Action session prior to the conference.
Curriculum in Action sessions
The sessions and abstracts listed below are intended as a guide for registrants who have yet to nominate their preferred Curriculum in Action sessions.
1. iTeach21: delivering excellence and equity in curriculum to regional, rural and remote communities
Presenters: Carole McDiarmid, Regional Director; Pam Ryan and Ann-Marie Furney, School Education Directors
This presentation will explore how the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Western Region is providing curriculum access and quality teaching and learning experiences for students in 200 schools in regional, rural and remote settings.
The region is building teacher capacity to deliver high quality learning experiences through a workforce development plan, ‘iTeach21’, which focuses on the elements of:
• leadership
• pedagogy
• syllabus implementation
• integrating learning technologies.
2. Engaging the disengaged with mobile learning
Presenter: Caryl Oliver, TAFE Development Centre
After the 2000 Kirby Report, the Victorian State Government introduced the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) to enable youths who find school unresponsive to their learning needs to gain Year 11 and 12 qualifications with a vocational focus and either gain employment or become re-engaged with learning. In 2006, William Angliss undertook an enterprise learning project with a group of senior VCAL students using mobile technology as a key tool for their activities in the areas of tourism and hospitality.
3. Literacy reform in Queensland
Presenter: Christine Ludwig, Curriculum Branch, Education Queensland
This concurrent session will draw on the Queensland Government’s teaching resources, which take up the view of literacy as a cultural and social practice by exemplifying how critical literacy practices can be incorporated into programs for the early and middle years of schooling in systematic and focused ways.
Session participants will engage in activities which exemplify the integration and explicit treatment of the four resources and illustrate how critical positions can be taken up in relation to particular texts used in the early and middle years of schooling.
4. Statements of learning – providing nationally consistent curricula from 2008
Presenters: Di Kerr, Curriculum Adviser, The Learning Federation, Curriculum Corporation; Joan Holt, General Manager, Curriculum Projects, Curriculum Corporation
There is a quest on for a national curriculum. Everyone seems to be in favour of it. But a national curriculum can be many things along a continuum. This session provides the opportunity to learn about the nationally-agreed curriculum documents that we already have, and for participants to consider whether these provide the answer to the national curriculum quest.
5. Relevance – life to text
Presenters: Elliott Washor, Co-director, The Big Picture Company, USA
The session will focus on developing ways of thinking about teacher training around student learning, and performance assessments that measure authentic performance through adult validation, including licensing, certifications and qualifications. Participants will have the opportunity of trialling these strategies in the session.
6. Visual literacy in a digital classroom – embedding critical thinking and creativity
Presenters: Deborah Cohen, Education Manager, and Peter Maggs, Head of New Media, from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)
This presentation will examine the practical resources developed by the ACTF that are currently being used across the curriculum in Australian primary and secondary schools. The ACTF has been at the foreground of providing schools with resources in the visual literacy area for over 25 years.
7. Building equity and access for all students through Success for Boys (S4B)
Presenters: Ainslie Cox, Success for Boys Project Manager, Curriculum Corporation; Margaret Barrett, Success for Boys Project Officer, Curriculum Corporation; Mr John Goh, Merrylands East Public School, Success for Boys Project Leader
Delegates will look at the research behind the highly acclaimed S4B Programme. Whilst many boys enjoy school and are successful in their studies, it is clear that others are underachieving against a range of key educational areas and broader social indicators. This session will then consider practical applications of strategies used by schools through stories of success within the S4B Programme.
In the work undertaken by teachers and researchers over the last five years, literacy, mentoring and use of information and communication technology (ICT) have each been found to be significant areas for improving learning outcomes for boys. The programme features a learning package highlighting these key foci, and considers an Indigenous perspective across the curriculum.
8. Art-infused science – bridging the divide
Presenters: Beth Crowley, Curriculum Corporation; Professor Karen B. Rogers, GERRIC, University of New South Wales; Sherryl Ryan, Education Consultant; and artist Judith Radin, The Emanuel School (Randwick), NSW
This innovative project was developed through a grant from the ASISTM [Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics] program. It involved practising artists and scientists working collaboratively with a cluster of NSW schools to explore scientific concepts in bioluminescence, environmental sustainability and sensing other worlds (electromagnetism). This project brought together teachers, students, artists, scientists, university education academics, curators, and arts and science organisations to develop high-level scientific literacy in primary students.
9. Senior years curriculum development in a development aid context
Presenter: David Howes, International Division, Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development
This session examines the nature of aid-assisted educational reform in developing countries through a case study of recent senior years curriculum reform in Cambodia. The case study is used to examine the nature of contemporary aid and development in the education sector, in particular the extent to which such aid is a form of neo-colonialism. Consideration is also given to the tensions that arise when competing stakeholders argue for priority to be given to ICT, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly the achievement of universal primary education.
10. What makes a great teacher? Performance for 21st century classrooms
Presenters: Andrew Dalgliesh, Acting Manager (Curriculum Exchange), Qld Department of Education, Training and the Arts
This presentation will explore the notion of teacher performance and practice in 21st century classrooms, using the Queensland Smart Classrooms strategy as a policy backdrop and examining examples from Queensland's Learning Place.
The session will start with participants exploring the attributes of great teaching and the development of agreed criteria against which teacher performance in 21st century classrooms can be judged. Participants will explore case studies of teaching practices made possible through the use of digital technologies, including communication tools, online learning, quality digital resources and connected learning communities. The session will conclude with an examination of Queensland's Smart Classrooms strategy as a vision for high-performance teaching and learning in the 21st century.
11. Shaping the curriculum – curriculum design for a personalised approach to learning
Presenters: Deb Vietri, Education and Curriculum Consultant; and Jayne-Louise Collins, Catholic Education Office Melbourne
This session explores factors impacting on the process of curriculum design, with consideration given to the current curriculum reform debate, State frameworks, pedagogy and the local school context. Processes for whole school design of curriculum will be presented and supported with authentic examples from schools. A key consideration throughout the presentation will be how curricula can be constructed in a way that personalises learning.
12. Catering for the natives – learners in the 21st century
Presenters: Jan Loftus, Raechelle Lee, Department of Education and Training, Western Australia
This presentation will showcase two unique projects undertaken by the Schools Online Curriculum Services branch of the Department of Education and Training WA.
The concurrent session will start with an overview of the Vox Pod Project, a series of structured interviews with students about their use of ICT. This was an innovative strategy to gather, share and develop knowledge about what students think about the use of ICT in their home and social contexts and what they expect school to offer them in this area.
Following this, participants will have the opportunity to see the way teachers and students are drawing on their enthusiasm for ICT in highly engaging examples of teaching and learning.
13. The learning spaces framework
Presenters: Deborah Newman, Andrew Thompson, Heather Woods and Jillian Dellit, Department of Education and Training, Western Australia
The upcoming MCEETYA ICT in Schools Taskforce publication, Learning spaces framework, has been 12 months in the making. All schooling jurisdictions have contributed to its development. Working from the assumption that student learning should drive the design of contemporary learning spaces, this national publication focuses on how to ensure schools fully exploit the potential of ICT to accelerate and expand learning outcomes in the contemporary world.
14. Alawa Primary – planning for the 21st century learner
Presenters: Sharon Reeves, Principal, Tracee Withers, class teacher, Alawa Primary School, Northern Territory
The presentation will describe and show pictorial evidence of Alawa’s four-year journey of change. The process began with the Alawa school community asking ‘What characteristics do our students require so they can be successful in 2035?’. The school’s vision was hence identified. The Stage One building program ($2.1M) was designed to reinforce the concepts. At the same time, the school explicitly articulated the methodology required to deliver the curriculum and implement the strategies required. The school’s leadership was reorganised to help ensure sustainability.
15. australianscreen online: from The Story of the Kelly Gang to Ten Canoes – using Australian moving image in the classroom
Presenters: Meg Mappin, Project Manager, Curriculum Corporation; Patricia Corby, Teacher, Geilston Bay High School, Tasmania
This joint presentation will introduce the innovative new website australianscreen online and will demonstrate how this rich resource of Australian moving image can be utilised in the classroom to engage students and assist their learning in the networked, multimodal world of the 21st century. The presentation will feature an overview of the website, and be followed by examples of how moving image from the website might be used in teaching practice.
16. A curriculum framework for educating for sustainability and global citizenship
Presenter: Kevin Butler, Environmental Education Unit, New South Wales Department of Education and Training
This concurrent session will explore the fundamental knowledge, understanding, decision-making skills, action competencies and citizenship values required for the development of a sustainable Australia in the 21st century. Session participants will have an opportunity to contribute to the development of a curriculum framework to assist the integration of the New South Wales schools program Education for Sustainability into existing New South Wales syllabuses K-12.
17. Creating eLearning Leaders (CeLL) – a snapshot of lessons learned
Presenter: Mark Dixon, eLearning Project Officer, Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
The CeLL Initiative (Creating eLearning Leaders) established a group of 28 schools to act as ICT and education change agents within their school clusters and regions. This project involved building on achievements and devising professional learning strategies to engage other schools in the innovative use of ICT. The CeLL Initiative is part of Microsoft’s Global Partners in Learning Program that operates in 71 countries worldwide. This concurrent session will provide a snapshot of the project and a summary of the lessons learnt from the accompanying research including issues of leadership, whole school approach, sustained usage, interdisciplinary learning, teacher competence, sharing and professional learning.