English in a National Curriculum

English in a National Curriculum: The Statements of Learning for English

There have been in the past, and continue to be, a number of attempts to introduce a national curriculum in Australia. Such attempts usually take one of two forms:

those that begin with a definition of the subject that attempts to stand alone and sets aside particular state-based definitions. The most recent comprehensive attempt of this sort was contained in the National Statements and accompanying National Profiles of the early 90s (AEC, 1994; Curriculum Corporation, 1994).
those which attempt to capture commonality across the states. The most recent manifestation of this version is contained in Statements of Learning for English. These Statements of Learning are meant to achieve not "a tight national curriculum as exists in England ... but a move to greater national curriculum consistency" (Holt et al, 2004: 16). The National Consistency in Curriculum Outcomes (NCOO) project aimed to reach agreement about what were essential learnings in the four subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science and Civics and Citizenship. These Statements of Learning were originally meant to encapsulate the "essentials" of the subjects, identify and build on common elements and outline a sequence of learning across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. The notion of “essentials” has been nominally dropped, but, as we argue below, has been effectively retained.

The Statements, by their very nature, represent a reductive view of English, and consequently do not do justice to the secondary English curriculum in NSW. As will be outlined below, the document’s rhetoric of ‘commonality’ and ‘consistency’ is viewed by ETA Council as being highly loaded, and is the cause of great concern. Much clarification is required before ETA would be in a position to endorse the Statements of Learning for English.

1. The Introduction to the Statements of Learning

The ETA finds the statement of purpose provided in the Introduction to be contradictory, and as a consequence damaging to the integrity of the subject.

The Introduction declares that the Statements of Learning “do not attempt to encompass the whole of what could be included in English”. Rather, they describe the “knowledge, skills, understanding and capacities” which “all students in Australia should have the opportunity to learn and develop”. Hence, there is a discourse of “entitlement” around the Statements of Learning. One ought to conclude from this that the Statements therefore highlight what is “essential” in the subject. It further follows that the Statements should therefore describe a “minimum” content for the subject.

It is intended that the Statements of Learning will be integrated into all the curriculum documents of States and Territories as they come up for renewal. Logically, therefore what follows is that each State and Territory will have the same essential “minimum” description of the subject.

The danger here is that by prescribing such a minimum the Statements of Learning will simply ensure that the States and Territories reintegrate into their curriculums after each round of curriculum renewal what is “common”, and, what is already present – unless there is a similar round of curriculum renewal for the Statements of Learning themselves.

Otherwise, by mandating integration of a set of Statements fixed in time, the net effect of “greater consistency” will amount to ensuring that English teachers continue to do in the future what they have always done. This is even clearer as the Introduction describes the Statements of Learning as themselves arising out of the current “aims of English curriculums in Australia”. Grounding what is, in effect, “essential” in English in the immediate past – given that certain current State and Territory syllabuses were developed in the 1990s – works against a futures orientation. As an example, the NSWETA finds it unacceptable that such a statement of English essentials in the twenty first century does not account at all for the creation of visual texts by students in English (what in NSW is called “representing”) despite accounting for the analysis of those same texts (“viewing”).

To put forward a metonymical ‘slice’ of the curriculum as a means of ensuring consistency amounts to a reduction of the subject. To equate what is “common” with what is “essential” is illogical. Moreover, to seek to describe student achievement in a partial sense appears to be a very odd endeavour. Both actions deny the subject its richness and complexity, and they sell the attainments of students short. Ensuring that the ‘slice’ of the curriculum described remains fundamentally fixed in the past of the subject, as these Statements largely do because syllabus review and development is not co-ordinated across States and Territories, amounts to the preservation of the status quo and the adopting of what comes across as a rather ‘head in the sand’ attitude to the future. In short, the Statements of Learning appear to be more about stasis than renewal.

There is, further, an implicit contradiction in the idea that the aims stated in the section English curriculums in Australia already exist in State and Territory curriculum documents, yet it is only by the adoption of these in the next round of curriculum renewal that “greater consistency” will be achieved.

ETA Council stresses that highlighting this implicit contradiction in the Introduction is not merely a matter of semantics. Rather, this contradiction highlights the silence in the Introduction with regards to the political and educational purposes of the National Consistency in Curriculum Outcomes project. As it stands, the Introduction circumscribes the deprofessionalisation of English teachers and actively militates against a long and fruitful tradition of curriculum development in Australia in response to secondary English teachers forming new practices in and for local conditions (Morgan, 1997: 22). In this way, without an overt statement of the political and educational necessity for the Statements of Learning, English teachers are left with little choice but to read them as an overt attempt to reduce their autonomy and to discipline and control the reshaping of the subject from the classroom upwards in the future. The underlying basis of and necessity for the Statements of Learning for English remains unclear. As this is the case, the reduction of what is “essential” in English to what is currently “common” is viewed by the NSWETA as a retrograde step. Why do we need national curriculum consistency at all and why do we need the essentials of English to be imposed in this particular way?

How is it envisaged that English teachers will continue to contribute at a local level to the ongoing reformulation of the subject in order to meet the needs and interests of students in the twenty first century? Given the National Curriculum Consistency project’s broad goal declared in its title, the Statements have very obvious political implications and pose a threat to teachers’ autonomy and to their ongoing role in the reformulation of the subject. ETA Council is unable to endorse a collection of Statements of Learning in English, which are to be used for uncertain political ends and as such constitute a potential challenge to the professionalism of teachers.

2. The Organisation of the English Statements of Learning around Reading and Viewing/Writing/Speaking and Listening

As has been stated above, the creation of visual and multimodal texts through Representing is a significant silence in the Statements of Learning. Further, there does not appear to be any description of expectations with regards to self-reflexive learning or metacognitive awareness. The generic NSW terms of composing and responding allow for the inclusion and integration of all modes rather than an artificial skills division into reading, writing etc.

3. Texts and Text Types in the Statements of Learning

While generally supportive of the Statements with regards to the description of the knowledge and skills students are expected to attain in Reading and viewing, the NSWETA suggests that socially and culturally critical reading practices are not foregrounded to the extent that they should be. While the document does concede that there is no attempt to “encompass the whole of what could be included in English”, we feel that this is a significant lack.

More problematic is the evident influence of genre theory on the language and content of the document. Privileging knowledge and skills in the area of Writing which are particularly associated with functional grammar and genre pedagogy, does not reflect the rich eclecticism of NSW Syllabuses. Further, as the influence of functional grammar and genre theory has no real basis in NSW Syllabuses at a secondary level, it cannot be said to have any systematic influence in NSW classrooms, particularly in non-DET schools, which have not been so readily exposed to genre theory. Such schools do not automatically participate in the ELLA testing (the writing component of which has been influenced by genre theory), and have not had access in the past to genre- based curriculum support materials developed under the auspices of the former DSP.

Of even greater concern is the manner in which the influence of genre theory is allowed to deny the validity of other approaches to teaching writing and other ways of understanding narrative, for example.

4. What are “the essentials” of English?

(This section is most usefully read in conjunction with the NSWETA Position Statement a on English and Literacy).

We are increasingly in an era when English is having to defend its territory. Goodwyn has written extensively about current concern among English teachers in England with the effects of national rhetoric on literacy (Goodwyn, 2001, 2003) through the National Literacy strategy (NLS). The secondary version of England's primary Literacy Hour is the Framework for English in which secondary teachers are expected to use the format and much of the content of the Literacy Hour. The resulting frustration among British teachers is summed up well in a recent chapter of his entitled "We teach English not literacy":

The NLS (and literacy as defined by the NLS) is actually very dull stuff, which does little to nurture children's imaginations. It neglects the aesthetic experience of English.

It is lamentable that the term 'English' and 'Literature' are progressively (like a spreading fungus) being usurped by the term 'Literacy'. (Goodwyn, 2003: 125).

We do not need to encourage reductivist views of the subject, however much the declare themselves “partial”.

In delineating "English" from "literacy", and from the most reductive senses of literacy, the ETA suggests that a National Curriculum drive should at the very least ask itself what it is that English deals with which no other area of the curriculum deals with. At the very least, the following should emerge:

Study of language
Reflection on language
Critique of language
Creation of language

IN TEXTS OF

The Imagination
The Personal
The Aesthetic

Print
Electronic
Oral
and
Visual

FORMS

No other area of the curriculum deals with isolates precisely those things which make the subject so centrally important to the curriculum:

the central concern with language for its own sake
the equal valuing of the critical and aesthetic domains of language
the valuing of imaginative and personal uses of language

No other area of the curriculum deals with the analysis of language for its own sake. As a specific sub-set of the "study of language", “reflection on language”, in the sense suggested by Curtis (1993), makes students' own language productions the objects of study both for its own sake and as a means of improving competence. The “critique of language” is meant in the specific sense of developing a critical literacy - an area less likely to be central to other areas of the curriculum. We cannot afford a curriculum that does not include developing critical citizens through the study and practice of English. “Creation of language” is meant in the very traditional sense of developing competent readers, writers, speakers, listeners and both viewers and creators of visual language, but this model, though aiming at literacy skills, has two specific implications:

in defining the essentials of English , it limits the subject’s unique role in the development of a functional literacy and
it lays out the textual ground in which those skills are to be developed which are not central to other areas of the curriculum, in terms of language study.

Literature and film media and multimedia remain essential – even peculiar - to English. The model also privileges personal uses of language as being unique to English, but it limits the role of English in what we used to call “everyday” uses of language (giving directions, answering the telephone etc), since these are not necessarily unique to the subject. The “aesthetic” is, intended to pick up uses of language in which the shaping of language is a dominant issue in its production. In effect, it reflects Britton’s (1971) notion of “poetic” language as central to English, and also sees English as being centrally concerned with rhetoric (Andrews, 1992). Recently, there has been the strong beginnings of a return to a sense of the aesthetic and the imaginative in English, and this may be where the subject can stake its strongest claims of uniqueness (Green, 2002; Kress, 2003; Misson; 2003a, 2003b; Sawyer, 2003; Misson and Morgan, 2006).

We believe that such a list of concerns lays out a broader foundation for what is essential in the subject than are laid down in the current Statements of Learning.

References

Andrews, Richard (ed) (1992). Rebirth of rhetoric: Essays in language, culture and education. London and New York: Routledge.

Australian Education Council (AEC) (1994). A statement on English for Australian schools. Carlton: Curriculum Corporation.

Britton, James (1971). “What’s the use? A schematic account of language functions”. Educational review, 23:3, pp.205-19.

Curriculum Corporation (1994) English: a curriculum profile for Australian schools. Carlton: Curriculum Corporation.

Curriculum Corporation (2005). Statements of Learning for English. Available at: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/consistency/national.php Accessed 23/02/06.

Curtis, David (1993). Teaching secondary English. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Dept of Education, Tasmania (2004). "Essential learnings framework". Accessed 11 July 2004 at: http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ocll/currcons/default.htm

Education Queensland (2001). The new basics project. Accessed 11 July 2004 at: http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/

Goodwyn, Andrew (2001). "Second-tier professionals: English teachers in England", L1: Educational studies in Language and Literature., 1:2 (Autumn), pp.149-61.

Goodwyn, Andrew (2003)."'We teach English not literacy': 'Growth' pedagogy under siege in England", in Brenton Doecke, David Homer and Helen Nixon (eds) English teachers a work: Narratives, counter narratives and arguments, KentTown, SA: AATE and Wakefield Press, pp.123-34.

Green, Bill (2002). "A literacy project of our own?", English in Australia, 134, July, pp.25-32.

Holt, Joan, Ludwig, Christine, Moore, Tony and Randall, Robert (2004). "Progress report: The National Consistency in Curriculum Outcomes Project", EQ Australia, 1: Autumn, pp.16-18.

Kress, Gunther (2003). “English for an era of instability: Aesthetics, ethics, creativity and ‘design’”, English in Australia, 134, July, pp.15-24.

Misson, Ray (2003a). “’Humane creativity’: Creativity, innovation and English teaching”, English in Aotearoa, 50, pp. 4-14.

Misson, Ray (2003b). “Imagining the self: The individual imagination in the English classroom”, English in Australia, 138, Spring, pp.24-33.

Misson, Ray and Morgan, Wendy (2006). The suspicion of pleasure and beauty: Towards a socially critical aesthetic in English teaching. Urbana, Ill: NCTE.

Morgan, Wendy (1997). Critical literacy in the classroom: The art of the possible. London and New York: Routledge

Sawyer, Wayne (2003). Sawyer, Wayne (2003). “What is this thing called love?” Keynote address, NSW English Teachers' Association State Conference, October.

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2004). "Curriculum reform project". Accessed 11 July 2004 at: http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/prep10/crp/index.htm