ESTIMULACIÓN A LA INDUSTRIA

To design a praxial music curriculum, Elliott and Silverman propose seven “curriculum commonplaces” that “…appear and reappear in all teaching-learning situations and in all discussions of curriculum making” (p. 407). These commonplaces are:

1. Aims

2. Knowledge (subject matter) 3. Learners (students)

4. Teaching-learning processes 5. Teacher(s)

6. Assessment

7. Learning context (p. 407).

While the authors suggest that these are common in every discussion surrounding

curriculum making, it is impossible for the ACM to account for four of them because they are directly related to classroom-specific situations: the learners, the teaching-learning

15 _{Elliott contributed to the Oxford Handbook of Music Education. He stated that philosophy of music education}

has two roles: “there is a fairly sizeable and rapidly expanding international literature intended to (1) analyze [sic], synthesize [sic], debate, or ‘problematize’ [sic] or ‘worry’ all theoretical and practical aspects of music education, and thereby, to (2) inform teachers, university music education students, and scholars about fundamental concepts, conceptions, controversies, principles, and practices in school and community music education” (Elliott 2012, p. 63).

processes, the teachers, and the learning context. There is no way that the designers of the ACM could have intimate knowledge of each and every classroom scenario—at best, they can have a broad thematic understanding provided by those who submitted responses to drafts (see Chapter Three). Therefore, while the commonplaces provide a comprehensive overview of the design processes in relation to both the ACM and school course documents, the ACM itself can only address aims, knowledge, and assessment. This is a limit in the praxial potential of the ACM; a further overview of concepts and models of curriculum is required to determine how the commonplaces can be utilised within a praxial curriculum framework.

There are a broad range of interpretations of the term curriculum; however for the purposes of this thesis I will use a conventional, layperson understanding of a curriculum as “what is taught in school or what is intended to be learned” (Posner and Rudnitsky 1986, pp. 7–8, in Elliott and Silverman 2014, p. 393).16 _{The key to this definition is the idea of intended}

outcomes: a curriculum consists of the planned and intended activities, content, and knowledge that are taught in schools. This is what the ACM provides for music teachers in Australia—it is the intention for music education in Australia.

One important repercussion of this concept of curriculum is the null curriculum: what is contained within a curriculum is implied to be valuable knowledge, and what is not

contained is not valued, or not important enough to be included (Eisner 2002, p. 26, p. 31, in Elliott and Silverman 2014, pp. 404–405). What is not contained is referred to as the null curriculum, and the implications for music education are important. If a music curriculum only includes information and examples from Western styles of music, then it implies that these styles are more important than any others. This perpetuates many of the inequalities in music education. Therefore, while I primarily refer to curriculum in the layperson sense, the implications of the null curriculum will also be discussed.

To find a model of curriculum that supports the praxial philosophy and aligns with the ACM, a further understanding of curriculum design is required. Very broadly, there are two categories of curriculum: the conventional or formal, which is linear and product-based; and

16 _{Elliott and Silverman provide an overview of different concepts of curriculum, citing many different authors.}

See Elliott and Silverman (2014, pp. 393–394) for a full exploration of these concepts. Smith and Lovat (2003, pp. 8–9) utilise many of the same authors and concepts in a similar overview of concepts of curriculum.

the non-conventional or progressive, which is based on processes and is not defined in a linear fashion. Although there are variations and compromises based on each approach, the conventional, product-based model of curriculum can be defined by a four-step, linear process. This process was established by Ralph Tyler in 1949, and still forms the foundation of some modern approaches to curriculum design—particularly outcome- or product-based curricula (Smith and Lovat 2003, pp. 114–115).

1. Define the purposes of the curriculum

2. Define the educational experiences related to the purposes 3. Define the organisation of these experiences

4. Define the evaluation of the purposes (Tyler 1949, in O’Neill 2010).17

This conventional process of designing a curriculum results in standardisation of content. As the four steps are linear, there is little in the way of dialogue between the steps, and there is also no reference to the students who are supposedly the beneficiaries of this kind of

curriculum. Indeed, in a product-based paradigm, students are conceived of as empty vessels who require filling with the same standardised knowledge, and this knowledge is defined by subject matter experts, not teachers (O’Neill 2010, Elliott and Silverman 2014, pp. 395–396). Elliott and Silverman are philosophically opposed to the product-based model, and although this model is an efficient way to design a curriculum, it has been criticised as being too linear.18 _{It is worth noting, however, that it would be unlikely for a purely Tylerian}

curriculum to be used in contemporary schooling.19

When considering the Australian Curriculum and its design process as a whole, it becomes apparent that it shares many similarities with the conventional model of curriculum design. For example, the four-step model can be found in developmental

documentation. The purposes of the curriculum were defined in the Melbourne Declaration

17 _{The basic, four-step model can be referred to as a Tylerian curriculum. O’Neill also cites the work of Wiggins}

and McTighe (2005) in relation to product-based curricula. Smith and Lovat (2003) explain that although the Tylerian approach is often seen as “the best approach to outcomes-based teaching,” it is “highly simplistic and distorts the enormous potential for outcomes-based learning” (p. 115).

18 _{Elliott and Silverman state that the following authors “prominently” rejected the Tylerian approach, and not}

just within music education: Joseph Schwab (1962), Lawrence Stenhouse (1968), Wilfred Carr and Stephen Kemmis (1986), F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean Clandenin (1988), and Shirley Grundy (1987).

19 _{Gary Thomas (2013) states that “In practice, few schools and fewer teachers fall neatly into the}

categories…In reality there is an acceptance that each position [formal and progressive] has some validity…So it’s not really so much a question of either/or, but, rather, ‘How much of each?’” (p. 33).

on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008, see Chapter Three); educational

experiences were defined based on these purposes, and these can be illustrated through the aims and achievement standards within each subject/Learning Area, and the Cross-

Curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities that permeate the Curriculum (see the

Introduction); the organisation of the experiences are defined through content descriptions and other organisational language (see Chapter Five); and the achievement standards also define the evaluation of the purposes. Furthermore, as explained in the curriculum

development documentation and also within the interviews, Learning Areas outside of the Arts are content-driven and highly standardised (ACARA 2012b, Chris et al. 2018). Therefore, the way the majority of the Australian Curriculum is structured is a strong match for the conventional model of curriculum.

An alternative is the process-based model of curriculum, which according to Elliott and Silverman better enables praxis (pp. 396–402). There are several variations on the process- based models, but they all share the characteristic of being “bottom-up” in their design approach (O’Neill 2010).20 _{This means that students are considered as being active in their}

learning rather than passive consumers of knowledge, and learning activities are only considered valuable for study if they contribute to meaning-making for each individual student (O’Neill 2010). As students influence the content and knowledge that teachers provide them, this approach can be considered student-centred, but it is also reliant on the skill and expertise of teachers to determine what is appropriate for them to learn. The expertise of teachers is acknowledged within the ACM itself: “Teachers in schools are the key to providing students with rich, sustained, rigorous learning in [music]” (ACARA n.d.-r, version 8.3). Although the ACM is situated within a broader curriculum that is product- based, it was evidently intended to provide music teachers with significant agency.

The bottom-up nature of a process-based model of curriculum highlights the key tension between the ACM as a document and its realisation as a praxial curriculum. Students are considered central to the design of a praxial music curriculum, but they are unable to influence what has been written in the ACM. With that said, there is very little in the way of defined content within the ACM. As seen in Chapter Seven, the dominant response by

20 _{The work of Fink (2003) and Ornstein and Hunkins (2009) inform O’Neill’s statements about process-based}

teachers to the ACM is that it is a broad and non-specific document. Therefore, it does not match the prescriptive, content-driven nature of the more conventionally designed Learning Areas/subjects of the Australian Curriculum, but neither does it match the requirements of a fully process-based curriculum. It seems as if the ACM is in something of a no-man’s land, written as a set of broadly defined guidelines. And yet, its role as the national curriculum in music matches perfectly with curriculum theorist John Goodlad’s position on the function of a standardised, one-size-fits-all curriculum:

I question the usefulness of a curriculum dreamed up out of one head intended for all settings…curriculum development is a continuous process that has great value for the results and quality of results. There are no surrogates for this process: at best there can only be helpful guidelines (Goodlad 1994, p. 131, in Elliott and Silverman 2014, p. 394).

If the ACM is a set of guidelines, then its helpfulness is determined by how well it guides teachers towards best practice. In the present thesis I use a considered interpretation of Elliott and Silverman’s praxial music curriculum as a framework for best practice. However, the responsibility for the content and focus of study lies with teachers. To this end, the ACM should encourage and enable teachers to interpret it praxially. I define the praxial

characteristics of a curriculum as the qualities needed to encourage teachers to deliver praxial learning experiences. I have distilled seven praxial characteristics from Elliott and Silverman’s work to build an analytical framework with which to assess the ACM.