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Goodman (1995) writes of school restructuring over the past century in the United States and argues that it can be described as comprising waves. The ‘first wave’ of school reform was in response to an agricultural age and economy, the second for an industrial age and economy, and the third for the coming information and technology age (p.1). The parallels with this experience make it a useful model to use in discussing the Australian experience.

As has already been discussed in the section Linking economy and schooling in Chapter 2, education has always had multiple goals. Schooling reinforces the dominant culture through hegemonic practices (McLaren 1994) in that it reinforces sex stereotyped roles, creates meritocratic schooling for predetermined vocations, and couples educational and

8 _{This section provided the basis for a presentation workshop for the UTMC, The University of}

Melbourne, 22 September 1998 entitled Politics, Professional Development and Assessment: stories from the battlefront.

economic goals. In the post war years when the bulge of baby boomers moved through schools the pressure was on to educate with limited and over stretched resources. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s expenditure per student in Australian schools was substantially increased. There was an implicit assumption that ‘given sufficient resources the desirable outcomes of education would follow’ (Karmel 1995, p.169). However there was no attempt to monitor any change as the result of increased funding. So in the absence of any evidence about the efficacy of the intervention ‘it has been transformed into a belief that there is actually evidence of no benefit to the intervention’ (McGaw, 1995, p.9). According to Boomer (1992) the absence of explicit information on student learning had an adverse effect on Australian school students.

Goodman (1995) argues that behaviouralistic instructional design has dominated curriculum development this century and is based upon the foundations of efficiency, productivity and individualism. Where schooling is for functional and commercial interests; education is uncluttered by messy relationships; and the learning experience is individual rather than collective, that is, it is for self-interest. The emergence of OBE should not be surprising. It is yet another derivative of the behaviourist mode.

The appeal of this approach to pedagogy lies in its ability to connect with the New Right, neo-liberal perspectives that have a predilection for the market ideology and draw

heavily from the corporate business line management approach. The explicit concern for educational outcomes has increased the interest in and application of OBE to schooling. This interest is demonstrated through ‘the associated interest in performance, evaluation, assessment, quality and accountability’ (Seddon 1999; Karmel 1995). For the neoliberals of the New Right there is opportunity for an accounting that balances the inputs against the outputs of education. To ensure the ultimate output of employability and social functionality of school leavers there is focus on the inputs – salaries, teaching materials and equipment, but with a failure to acknowledge the processes related to ‘teaching and learning’ occurring between the two. Thus the Taylorist view of education prevails with all of its behaviourist baggage and the socio-cultural-political dimensions are silenced and ignored.

The exploration of effective schooling has appeal for people wanting to see value for money: that schools are in fact doing their job - schooling. There is an implied balance between the inputs and outputs of schooling. Resources such as money for salaries, teaching materials and equipment, buildings, maintenance and other infrastructure are provided so that ‘graduating’ individuals are socially functional and in particular are employable. The Mayer Committee (Australian Education Council 1991a) elaborated on the Finn Committee’s (Australian Education Council 1991b) employment-related key competencies stating them as: collecting, analysing and organizing information;

communicating ideas and information; planning and organizing activities; working with others and in teams; using mathematical ideas and techniques; solving problems; and using technology.

Between 1989 and 1992 the Australian federal, state and territory governments were developing the national statements and profiles for eight broad areas of learning. Clements (1996) in writing about the attempt to develop an Australian national curriculum describes ‘a top-down, hierarchical approach to curriculum reform typified by a core curriculum, achievement orientation and that would enable accountability (p.63). The major player in the creation of a political climate ripe for the acceptance of a national curriculum was the Australian Education Council (AEC).

The AEC was an intergovernmental body consisting of the Federal and State education ministers. According to Watkins (1996) the growing power of the AEC was typical in that it signified how the administration of education shifted away from educationalists towards politicians and the business community. The national curriculum was an instrument of corporate compliance, according to Bartlett (1993).

It was the AEC which generated the Hobart Declaration on Schooling, ten common and agreed national goals for schooling; established the Australian Curriculum Corporation, a clearing house for national curriculum activities particularly resources; pushed for a national approach to teacher education; and established a Curriculum and Assessment Committee (CURASS) for national collaborative curriculum and assessment development

e.g. the national curriculum statements and profiles (Reid 1995, p.43).

Boston (1995) poses that the Hobart Declaration on Schooling has strength not so much in what is says rather ‘in the fact that for the first time in the history of this country agreement was reached on what schooling is about’ (p.35). Whilst there was ultimately no endorsement for a national framework for school curriculum the notion of OBE remained when individual states and territories used the national framework to generate their derivative curricula. Significant financial and professional incentives such as tied grants, the National Professional Development Program (NPDP) funding, continued financial support of the Curriculum Corporation and the creation of the Australian Teaching Council (ATC) ensured that the essence of the national curriculum lived on. Clements (1996) describes the effect of such incentives as creating a de facto national curriculum.

The need to control education and to apply the principles of performance, accountability and quality by the incumbent government reflects a change in economic paradigm rather than educational. In the case of the national curriculum the benefits to having

collaboration on curriculum according to the Curriculum Corporation (1994) were enhanced quality, cohesion and resource savings (p4). Education and schooling become instruments of economic policy, educational outcomes are used to measure knowledge and skills to achieve particular purposes - especially work and employment (Karmel 1995). OBE as it stands in Australia is not purely an educational phenomenon, rather ‘schooling that uses outcomes provides a foundation for a more productive workforce’ (Brady 1996, p.26). Outcomes are standards by which the work of teachers and schools are judged.

A key feature of the Australian national curriculum statements and profiles was therefore the focus on educational outcomes and application. Each of the eight broad areas of learning contained a profile or description of learning across eight levels, level statements, outcomes (descriptions of skills and knowledge acquired) and pointers (evidence that the outcome had been achieved) (Brady 1996). As Elmore (2000) points out ‘standards based reform has deceptively simple logic: schools, and schools systems,

should be held accountable for their contributions to students learning’ (p. 12). Thus the onus to deliver on this falls to teachers, as does any failure to deliver.