Outcomes for accountability in curriculum planning in Australia

Statements of outcomes have recently become part of the educational agendas in many countries as a means of ensuring greater school accountability. This article accounts for the emergence of outcomes as the predominant statements of educational intent in Australian schools, and synthesises the findings of two studies which investigated the extent to which teachers are incorporating outcomes into their teaching planning and practice in New South Wales. The findings indicate that outcomes are instrumental in teachers’ planning; that they are stated differentially according to subject; that they are stated more in relation to skills than knowledge or values; that they are stated for short-term intent rather than long-term intent, and that they have not significantly changed the nature of classroom pedagogy. Introduction The notion of outcomes as statements of educational intent has become increasingly important in several countries in the nineties. Outcomes, as distinct from the more general statements of educational intent like aims and objectives, provide a means of system and organisation accountability because they are overt, observable and therefore assessible indicators of student achievement. Such accountability has become part of an economic agenda which prompted the emergence of the national curricula in both England and Wales, and Australia. While the nomenclature relating to statements of educational intent is variable across countries, in Australia the sequence of goal, aim and objective has generally constituted an increasing order of specificity. The perennial debate on whether objectives need to be behavioural has never been uniformly resolved, with arguably typical practice being a smattering of behavioural and non-behavioural objectives in system and school curriculum documents. In 1991, and corresponding with the emergence of the national curriculum in Australia, the Board of Studies in New South Wales published Curriculum Outcomes, defining outcomes as: the intended results of teaching and learning expressed as a set of broad, comprehensive, assessible and observable indicators or benchmarks of student achievement at each stage of a course (p.5). A pyramid diagram preserved the traditional ordering of general to specific, adding outcomes at the base: aims, objectives, syllabus outcomes, and classroom/lesson outcomes. Outcomes, the Board of Studies claimed, clarified and explicated the objectives. Outcomes were not new in Australia or elsewhere. In Australia the label was sometimes used to signify educational intent, but outcomes were more often embedded in statements of behavioural objectives. However in April 1991 the Australian Education Council identified eight learning areas for a national curriculum (English, maths, science, technology, languages other than English, studies of society and environment, the arts and health including physical education and personal development), and each was to have a “statement” or agreed national position, and a profile or description of progress in terms of learning outcomes. The states were to develop their own statements and profiles consistent with the national position. Adoption by the states has been slow and inconsistent. A survey of the state departments of education by the Curriculum Corporation in July 1997 indicated that almost all states were using the statements and profiles as a basis for curriculum development though with local variations, and that they perceived the nationally developed documents as providing a common language, a national set of standards, and a framework for planning, assessing and reporting. Conversely, commonly cited difficulties of introducing an outcomes-based approach included the workload generated in record keeping and assessment; the cost to systems of professional development, materials development and time release; and the difficulties facing primary teachers working with all the learning areas. As a result of a review in 1995, New South Wales is no longer adopting the nationally developed statements and profiles for implementation through syllabuses, yet remains committed to “a manageable number of outcomes”. Similarly, the most common modification made to the national profiles by the other Australian states has been a reduction in the number of outcomes. This article synthesises the results of two studies which investigated the ways in which teachers are using outcomes in their curriculum planning in primary schools in New South Wales. As all states are committed to a process of gradual implementation, and as New South Wales develops its own syllabuses, many teachers are making their first tentative steps in planning by outcomes.