These seven praxial characteristics represent an idealistic vision of what a praxial music curriculum looks like. They are idealistic because they do not take the realities and limitations of the Australian context into account: an analysis similar to Regelski’s of the 1995 edition of Music Matters (2005, pp. 238–240), and similar to Smith and Lovat’s (2003, pp. 14–17) extrapolation of Stenhouse’s argument for curriculum creation.29 It is important
to acknowledge these discrepancies here and they will be explored in greater detail in Chapters Three, Four, and Five. Firstly, it can be stated that the overarching goal of the Australian Curriculum until the publication of “Gonski 2.0” (Department of Education and Training 2018) was standardisation and, although there are significant differences between the ACM and the remainder of the Australian Curriculum, there are some tensions that arise from attempting to contain a broad, praxially-influenced framework within a curriculum primarily designed for standardisation.30 Secondly, these characteristics ignore the fact that
29 Smith and Lovat state that “there are large gaps between what it is intended should happen and what
actually happens in curriculum work” (2003, pp. 14–15, emphasis in original). In addition, Elliott and Silverman acknowledge some of the real-world limitations placed on such idealistic visions: “Let’s end this section with a reality check. In writing this book, we’re fully aware that there are many forces—political, economic, social, cultural, educational, practical, and so forth—that work against music educators generally and against any efforts to implement this book’s concept of music education” (p. 16).
30 The implication of Gonski 2.0 is that the focus on standardised achievement in literacy and numeracy has not
resulted in any tangible strengthening of Australia’s educational outcomes (Department of Education and Training 2018). It is unclear whether this report will lead to any changes to the focus of Australia education, but
the overwhelming majority of primary schools in Australia use generalist teachers to teach music, and do so in a multi-arts format (Butler 2015, pp. 30–36), contradicting characteristics four and five. The implications of this will be explored in Chapter Three. It may be that despite the praxial philosophy being an appropriate framework for best practice in music education, it may not be the most constructive or realistic practice for primary music education in Australia. An awareness of Australia’s history in education and schooling contextualises this point and raises further challenges.
It is important to establish that Australia’s present approach to schooling and education is based on a Western model. Campbell and Proctor’s A History of Australian Schooling (2014) establishes that Australia’s school education system is closely linked to that of Britain. They begin their account of what would be recognisable as an Australian school system— “’schools’ with four walls and persons whose profession was that of a ‘teacher’” (p. 1)—in 1788, and are quick to describe such a model as British.31 Later, the introduction of
progressive approaches to education in the early twentieth century “mainly arrived in Australia from the United Kingdom” (p. 107), although there was an influence from American progressives. The authors describe how Australian schools throughout the twentieth century “have helped assimilate children [from immigrant families] into the
dominant culture” (p. 249, emphasis added) and have excluded or marginalised Indigenous
students (p. 249). They also indicated that an assimilationist approach extended through until the start of the 1970s, when attempts to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism started (p. 204). While attempts to promote multiculturalism have doubtlessly increased in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the school system itself is a product of a Western cultural hegemony and, as evidenced by the continued prevalence of Mathematics, Science, the Humanities, and particularly English within the curriculum, is arguably still primarily monocultural in nature. The challenges in implementing a multicultural music curriculum with the auspices of a primarily monocultural school system are the subject of
the rhetoric surrounding Australian education since its publication suggests a continued focus on a “back to basics” model of school education emphasising literacy and numeracy outcomes (ABC News Breakfast 2018).
31 It is worth noting that Campbell and Proctor explain that in only exploring Australian education from British
settlement onwards, they do Indigenous populations an “injustice” (p. 1). They then go on to give a brief overview of education “before European contact” (pp. 2–6), in so doing highlighting that the complexities and sophistication of Indigenous education methods have been lost due to the limited understanding of the early British settlers (p. 2).
much of the remainder of this thesis, and these challenges again highlight the idealism of the praxial characteristics in Australia.
Accordingly, a point of tension emerges when considering the Cross-Curriculum Priorities, particularly the multicultural emphasis of the Indigenous and Asian Priorities against the praxial characteristics. The first praxial characteristic states that no individual musical styles should be referred to at the most abstract level of a praxial curriculum, but these two broad groups of cultural styles are exceptions in the ACM. In fairness, reference to these styles does not contain any statements of universals: their presence simply serves to target attention towards the delivery of these two broad cultural categories at some point within students’ study at every level of schooling. For the ACM to be accurately realised, teachers should address the music contained within these two Priorities: this is the focus of Chapter Nine.
It is also worth drawing attention to the “uneasy relationship between the Arts and education” in Australian schools (Ewing 2010, p. 5). As mentioned in the Introduction, music (and the Arts more broadly) are second-phase subjects within the Australian Curriculum which suggests they are not as much of a priority as the first-phase subjects: namely English, Mathematics, Science, and History. Furthermore, Arts subjects are not given as much time or space in the curriculum as the first-phase subjects (discussed in Chapter Four), which implies something of a hierarchy in the subjects of the Australian Curriculum. This is an interesting phenomenon because, historically, Arts subjects (particularly music) have been considered a central component of Western school curricula (Thomas 2013, pp. 91–94).32 What causes
are behind the relegation of the Arts to the status of a second-phase subject? Answering this question in detail is beyond the scope of the present thesis, but I suggest that a contributing factor is the formal/product-based perspective that the role of education is jobs training, or preparing the student body for their later lives in the work force. This is a perspective that has been used increasingly since the Industrial Revolution (Thomas, 2013, p. 107) and is directly referenced by the Australian Curriculum: “The Australian Curriculum is designed to develop successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed
32 Thomas argues that there has been very little change in the subjects included within Western curricula since
citizens” (ACARA n.d.-v, version 8.3, emphasis added).33 While Arts subjects are certainly
sites where students can develop creativity, they do not contribute as obviously or directly to their job preparedness. I suggest that the dichotomy between developing creativity and
developing a work force is at least partly responsible for the tensions between the Arts and
the Australian Curriculum more generally.
In conclusion, the praxial characteristics are a useful framework to measure how well the ACM aligns with a concept of best practice, but it is not as simple as saying yes or no to their presence within the ACM: the matching of the praxial characteristics cannot be abstracted from the Australian educational context. In the end, the ACM is merely a guide for music teachers, whose expertise in music and education is fundamental to the programs that they deliver. Therefore, even if the ACM entirely rejected the praxial approach, I have no doubt that there would be praxially-based programs within individual schools. The importance of teachers cannot be understated, and although a curriculum can guide teachers to best practice, it is the teachers who are ultimately responsible for its delivery. As most teachers are apparently unaware of the existence of MEP (Elliott 2012, p. 65), it is important that the ACM encourages the delivery of music in a way that aligns with best practice. The next chapter begins the analysis of the ACM to ascertain whether this occurs.
33 This quote also highlights creativity as an educational goal. However, creativity is generally construed to be
desirable in the Australian Curriculum only when it contributes to students’ readiness for the work force. The “Gonski 2.0” review also illustrates this: “School education must also prepare students for a complex and rapidly changing world. As routine manual and administrative activities are increasingly automated, more jobs
will require a higher level of skill, and more school leavers will need skills that are not easily replicated by
machines, such as problem-solving, interactive and social skills, and creative thinking” (Department of Education and Training 2018, p. ix, emphasis added). There are no references to creativity as a desirable outcome in its own right.
Chapter Three: Australian Curriculum in Music—context and
development
3.1 Introduction
This chapter explores the development of the ACM by analysing the government documents that trace its development, which is important within the context of the present thesis as the documents establish the philosophical viewpoints that have shaped the ACM’s design. As established in the previous chapter, the most up-to-date philosophical position that supports an inclusive and comprehensive music curriculum is the praxial philosophy, and I argue that the ACM should display the influence of praxis for it to be considered an example of best practice. Therefore, a key point of analysis within this chapter is how the
developmental documents contain music praxialism or alternative philosophical perspectives.
Tracing the development of the ACM also indicates the extent to which curriculum designers responded to the calls for improvement in music education nationally. As the
National Review indicated, school music was underperforming in 2005, and despite the
introduction of the ACM to Canberra in 2016, little has changed.1 I argue that the
development of a national curriculum was a prime opportunity to address the issues identified in the Review, and so understanding how those who wrote the ACM acted on, or did not act on, the Review’s recommendations contextualises the present ACM. The design process was fraught with tension between the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), its advisors, and teachers. This chapter seeks to understand how these tensions affected the final product.
I begin with the National Review (Department of Education, Science and Training 2005), which serves as an introduction to the state of music education in Australia prior to the development of the ACM. From here, the scope for a national curriculum was introduced in the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council on Education), which can be seen as the scaffolding on which the Australian Curriculum was built. Following this, the ACM commenced process of development under the broader umbrella of the Arts Learning Area in 2009. The Arts then entered the shaping
1 As noted in the Introduction, schools began implementing the ACM in Canberra as early as 2016 (ACT
phase in 2010, followed by the writing phase in 2012. In addition to the papers that document this process, the reference groups that helped to write them are also listed (ACARA 2009b, 2010b, 2012a). In combination, these documents present a narrative about the development of the ACM, the Arts, and music that has problematic implications.