History curriculum development in New South Wales

The increasing bureaucratisation of the New South Wales [NSW] Board of Studies [BOS], the statutory body responsible for curriculum determination in NSW, has led to a tightening of curricular controls and the further marginalisation of teacher participation in curriculum decision-making processes. The prevalence of acontextual mandated curriculum change initiatives compromises teacher professionalism and undermines teacher practice and student learning. These issues are examined through the lens of recent history curriculum change in NSW. The development and dissemination of the 1998 Years 7-10 History Syllabus 1 provides insight into the control mechanisms underlying the construction of curriculum in NSW– who controls it, how, why and to what effect. Further, it also reveals that teachers experience curriculum control in two particular ways, the first is through marginalisation in change processes and the institution of increasingly rigorous accountability mechanisms. The second is through the mandating of specific subject matter knowledge. The effects of curriculum control on history teachers’ perceptions and enactment of the new syllabus are subsequently explored. Introduction This paper examines issues of curriculum control and its impact on history teachers’ perceptions and enactment of a new syllabus. To provide background, this paper overviews the broader subject debates and the international, national and state educational structures, policies, and changes framing the development of the new syllabus. Specifically, it is argued that the international trend towards standards based educational reform has seen the strengthening of stringent curriculum development processes as evidenced in efforts towards systemic reform and mandated change. The power relationships embedded within these approaches to curriculum change have implications for the development of curriculum in NSW. They also have implications for the role and status of teachers in change processes. Accordingly, this paper examines research into systemic reform and mandated change processes highlighting the role of teachers within these processes. This is important, as the new syllabus is a system wide, mandated curriculum change. This paper subsequently examines the recent nature of history syllabus development in NSW with specific reference to the processes and structures underlying the development and dissemination of the new syllabus. In an effort to explicate issues of power – who has it, who doesn’t, why and to what effect this paper explores the multiple stakeholders involved in the syllabus development process and the varying coalescing and contesting agendas driving it. It contends that the change structures and 1 For reader ease the 1998 Years 7-10 History Syllabus shall subsequently be referred to as the new syllabus.