NT CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK CASE STUDY

Mike Grenfell

Northern Territory University

This paper reports on work carried out towards developing the Northern Territory Curriculum framework using a case study approach and action research. Particular attention is paid to how the esseNTial learnings were provided for, the extent and scope of the programs devised, the use of outcomes focused learning, the nature of partnership and collaboration, and the relationship between action research and Professional Development. It concludes with some suggestions for improving Professional Development activities of this kind.

INTRODUCTION

The data for this paper was collected from the work of a small group of teachers, five in number, seeking credit towards their Bachelor of Education or Masters degree at the Northern Territory University for school case studies undertaken as part of the piloting phase of the NT Curriculum Framework. The case studies employed an Action Research focus and were undertaken during the first term of the school year, 2000. Assessment was by way of a short progress report, an unsent letter (Mitchell and Weber, 1999) and the Case Study itself.

The unsent letter was intended as an opportunity for teachers to express their hopes and disappointments, satisfactions and dissatisfactions, successes and frustrations. It was generally written with members of the Curriculum Frameworks Project Team, School Principal, or other staff members in mind. It offers an opportunity to ask problematic questions, relate little anecdotes, conversations with other teachers, children's comments and so forth.

Students were issued with a number of readings including the occasional paper written for the Innovative Links project by Shirley Grundy (1995), Action Research as Professional Development, and The Northern Link: Action Research in Top End Schools compiled and edited by Grenfell and Clancy (1998). Additional readings dealt with case study methodology (McKernan, 1991; Sturman, 1997; and Bassey, 1999), a consideration of essential learnings as they appear in frameworks both nationally and overseas (Engliss, 2000), some idea of the relationship between case studies and action research (Elliott,1991; McNiff, Lomax and Whitehead, 1996; McTaggart, 1991), the nature and extent of collaboration (Van Manen, 1990), and the keeping of professional journals (Christine O'Hanlon, 1997), as well as providing additional accounts of Action Research projects (Cummings and Hustler, 1986; Christopher Day, 1997). The final reading dealt with getting started on action research and was taken from The Action Research Planner by Kemmiss and McTaggart (1988). The annotated bibliography prepared for the students is available on request.

The key issues

In writing up the Case Study, students were directed to a number of key issues, some of which were identified in the overview of the Curriculum Framework Project available on the old Department website.

1. The driving principles: Were the principles driving the project adhered to? What evidence was there of multiple pathways being adopted? How were learners able to proceed at their own pace? How were learners assessed, particularly students with disabilities and impairments? Was the process of drawing up Individualised Programs complicated by the introduction of the frameworks.

2. The esseNTial learnings: How were the esseNTial learnings employed? How were they provided for? Were difficulties experienced in incorporating the learning areas or any of the other inter-related structural components? What kinds of environment, programs and structures contributed to the development of esseNTial learnings? For example, how was resilience provided for, how was it assessed and valorised? How were students empowered?

3. Outcomes focused learning: To what degree did the principles of outcomes-focused learning drive the project? What difficulties were experienced in arriving at these? Was there a clarity of focus? Were outcomes made sufficiently specific? Were high expectations maintained? Did teachers experience any difficulties in focusing on the expected sequence of conceptual and cognitive development? To what extent did these sequences appear to conform to teachers' expectations? What evidence was there of expanded opportunities?

4. Advantages of the framework: What were the proven advantages of the framework? How does the inclusive and flexible approach adopted compare to previous approaches? To what extend has the framework rationalised the previously overloaded curriculum? What sort of evidence will you need for this?

5. Assessment. What are the implications for assessment of using the Framework? What alternative assessment procedures will be necessary?

5. Modifications: What modification to the frameworks were made? Could teachers work efficiently with the sample lay outs provided for the learning areas?

6. Partnership and collaboration: What kinds of partnerships have emerged that did not exist before? How can teachers ensure they will be sustainable? What was the nature of the collaboration that ensued? How were critics of the program drawn into it, convinced, reassured? Did anyone walk away from the project? Why?

7. Emergence of a global perspective: What evidence was there of a global perspective emerging? Could this be detected in the way the children thought or in the information and communication technology employed? Could a developmental sequence be identified?

8. School climate: Did the school climate change? Were institutional structures modified? Was there a new ethos? Did this extend to the behaviour of the children?

9. Empowerment: Will the adoption of Curriculum Frameworks free up the work of teachers and empower them to make their own decisions and engage in further research? Under what circumstances?

It was not expected that students would deal with each and every one of these issues and they were asked to select those that they felt were most relevant. To try to predict the key issues too exhaustively in advance, or to insist that each one be addressed, is in fact counter to the principles of action research. (Cummings and Hustler, 1986)

The Framework movement

I am indebted to Wendy Engliss for her power point presentation at The Seventh International Literacy and Research Network Conference on Learning held at RMIT in July 2000. Engliss (2000) provides us with a valuable introduction into changing presentations and conceptions of curriculum with the emergence of globalisation. Her presentation was included in the materials sent to students to remind teacher-researchers and curriculum developers that the way we frame a problem determines how we proceed. We inevitably become selective and may exclude vital aspects of futures thinking. If we choose the wrong track, it is sometimes difficult to change direction and retrace our steps.

In this paper I want to ask why curriculum frameworks are being embraced now, at this point in the development of schools. There appear to be four major reasons: (1) modernist approaches to curriculum had dug a hole for teachers which prevented them from teaching and it became necessary to rationalise the curriculum; (2) the notion of frameworks sits well with constructivist views of coming to know; (3) the emergence of economic rationalism has led to a focus on outputs and outcomes, rather than inputs for measuring efficiency and productivity (Manno, 1994); and (4) the post-modernist, post-structural turn meant that governments had to find other ways of regulating affect and controlling subjectivity (Robertson, 2000).

Rationalising the curriculum

Subject to the incessant and competing demands of the subject-based 'disciplines', those teachers who did not escape the classroom became buried in reams of paper. Planning and programming using the profiles provided, proved almost unworkable. Managers, administrators and the shadowy BOS standing behind them, had effectively lost control of the process, sunk in effect by their own bureaucracies. In the NT, the now defunct SACS (or Syllabus Advisory Committees) had developed a life of their own. Governance was breaking down, and productivity, calculated on inputs into schooling, was diminishing. People began to speak of 'rationalising the curriculum' by which they meant making it more manageable, more interpretable, more user friendly, in an effort to win back constituents. The new curriculum framework provided an opportunity for a new bare-bones curriculum. A new rationalisation, then, but whose rationality? The movement has amounted to nothing more than a continuation of the Enlightenment project, with social melioration writ large, and a return to standardisation and surveillance usually under some sort of standards and accountability commissariat.

Constructivist approaches

An examination of the NT Curriculum Framework will reveal the influence of constructivism. Indeed, one of the areas in the EsseNTial Learnings provides for the constructive learner and, although it would be incorrect to equate the constructive learner with constructivism, there are some similarities and overlaps. It is therefore necessary to detour in order to consider what is meant by contructivism and constructivist approaches.

Constructivism emphasises the perspectival and contextual nature of our knowing.

It is based upon the precept that there can be no single, totalising (or mono-logical) way of thinking about the world. Instead, constructivists adopt an eco-logical approach characterised by multiplicity, heterogeneity, complexity, uncertainty, indeterminacy, changeability, and lack of fixity.

According to Prawat (1992, p357) 'constructivism involves a dramatic change in the focus of teaching, putting the student's own efforts to understand at the centre of the educational enterprise', rather than viewing the student and the content as relatively fixed, separate entities. Beginning with the prior beliefs and understandings of the student, constructivists seek to bring about conceptual change by creating dissatisfaction with existing beliefs, ensuring that the student finds 'the alternatives both intelligible and useful in extending understandings to new situations', and encouraging the student to find out 'some way to connect new beliefs with their earlier conceptions.

Constructivism is not solely concerned with a detailed analysis of the way that knowledge is actually constructed, shared or (re-)produced. It is also concerned with the process of analogical and relational thinking and the way that knowledge is transformed to meet new situations (Mezirow, 2000). Constructivism therefore addresses the question of how best to provide for possible futures, and seeks to develop self-autonomy and competence in the face of rapid endemic social and cultural change. It thus fits well with an approach to designing social futures.

Whilst recognising the effects of the structure of social systems upon agency, constructivists do not believe that the world is structured according to a series of natural laws which simply await discovery or which operate at some deep structural level. Any patterns or regular occurrences are thought to be imposed on reality by observers. Similarly as all previous epistemologies (or ways of conceiving of, and organising knowledge) are considered to be inadequate, constructivists are deemed to have moved beyond the modernist project of establishing (or ‘fixing’) cause and effect.

At the same time, constructivists accept that formal, logico-deductive, rational Cartesian methods of systemic thought with their reliance on neutrality, objectivity, replication, and universality are inadequate. Constructivists, then, accept the importance of affect, intention, motive and desire and the role of emotional intelligence in rethinking reason. They acknowledge the continuing existence of contradiction, paradox, and irony without believing that these can or should be fully understood or explained. Constructivists therefore seek to promote forms of thinking that are intuitive, inspirational, analogical and (re-)creational, hence the emphasis on The Creative Learner in the EsseNTial Learnings.

It should by now be obvious therefore, that there is not simply one constructivist approach, but many. (Brooks,1990; Brooks and Brooks, 1993). Constructivism celebrates multiplicity, variation, alternatives and difference. But whatever approach is adopted, must allow for the different standpoints and perspectives of the observer, alternative ways of viewing and framing the situation, and a tolerance for incompletion and uncertainty.

Constructivists accept that the process of coming to know is student-driven. ‘Knowledge begins and ends with the individual knower’ (McNiff, 1993, p35) Learning is seen as a self-regulated process of resolving inner cognitive conflicts. Although this process may be culturally and socially mediated, the construction of understanding (or the structural changes which take place in thought), is an internal, subjective, process undertaken by the individual. Hence, educators propose situations for people to think about, they watch what they do, and get them to tell them what sense they make of it, rather than telling them what to make of it.

Constructivists engage learners in dialogic encounters, holding conversations and telling stories. Constructivist teaching is essentially collaborative at each stage. All too often teachers view 'social work' and classroom talk as counterproductive, whereas it may in fact be a prerequisite.

Coming to know from a constructivist perspective involves perturbation whereby the learner experiences a period of disturbance. There is therefore a need for teachers toup the ante, to confront students and make them uncomfortable with their commonly accepted, taken-for-granted views of the world. This continual probing and creation of dissatisfaction and discontent is a feature of constructivist teaching.

At the same time, as Brown and Duguid (1996), make clear in their penetrating account of ‘stolen knowledge’, learning is not dependent on a pedagogical strategy or teaching technique. It happens regardless, irrespective of the context of learning, the intention of the teacher, and the form of learning.

Constructivism is much more concerned with the whole and holistic knowing than the identification and teaching of separate identifiable parts.

Constructivism implies alternative forms of authentic assessment which value critical thinking, risk-taking, collaborative decision-making and joint presentations, and utilise opportunities presented by developments in multi-media and hyper-media. Traditional processes which operate on restricted definitions and doubtful criteria of rightness and wrongness are out of place in a constructivist approach. New forms of benchmarking are required which provide non-judgemental feedback and involve students in self-directed or negotiated assessment. The focus is moving from amount of work judged in terms of effort, coverage of the syllabus (as if there can only be one predetermined syllabus), and quantitative, numerical assessment of performance. It is significant that all the case study teachers found it difficult to adopt the new mindset that must develop around authentic assessment.

Assumptions underlying curriculum frameworks:

(1) With globalisation has come a return to theories of universal laws, applicable to all people everywhere in some way. These imply sets of 'essential' knowledge(s) which are valid universally. There is a delightful ambiguity in the expression 'a renewed world view' in the language of the planners. Clearly, only one, to which they have access.

(2) The relative looseness of the frameworks can provide for diversity and context. Variation in, and the situated nature of learning, are acknowledged but viewed from within a particular paradigm.

(3) An unspoken, unacknowledged process of hybridity is continually at work. Incommensurability can be overcome. Conflicts can (must be) resolved, hence such capabilities as 'understanding cultural connectedness' are included. There is no mention of disconnectedness, only a continuation of the comfortable Australian approach to

multiculturalism outlined by Stratton and Ong (1992) and now thrown into confusion with the arrival of the Tampa and asylum seekers.

(4) Globalisation threatens domestic markets and encourages international competitiveness: hence reference to 'the vital results' and entrepreneurial education. Equity is revisited in some configurations, but rarely are the disenfranchised and marginalised recalled to consciousness.

(5) Frameworks are a manifestation of a preoccupation with 'standards'. International competitiveness is made part of the rhetoric of 'World Class curriculum'.

(6) Somehow, the failed managerialist logic of standards and accountability applied to business and commerce, and the corporate collapses which followed, can and should be applied to education. The selfishness, greed and acquisitiveness associated with fast capitalism to which Apple (2000) draws attention in his exposee of neo-rightist and neo-liberal thinking pass unquestioned.

Difficulties faced in designing social futures

(1) What to do with traditional learning areas (the so-called Key Learning Areas)? Incorporate them within the essential learnings, see them as add-ons to the essential learnings or replace them with the essential learnings? How much of this baggage do we carry with us into the future? In fact the answer to this question will be taken out of their hands of the designers by the politicians.

(2) Form and focus. Should this be narrow or broad, inclusive or exclusive? For example should there be an exclusive focus on Learning Resources and Information Technology as in some frameworks? To what extent should the key issues be identified in advance?

(3) Should the curriculum remain knowledge and skills based or should the focus move towards processes and strategies?

(4) What it the place accorded to the self and the relationship of the individual to society? What is the definition or understanding of the self adopted? For those who miss out on the profits of globalisation there is always serving the community, acceptance of responsibilities, mutual obligation and 'The Third Way'.

(5) Changing conceptions about the meaning of work. Do the designers really understand what is involved here? Do they realise whose agenda they have taken on?

(6) The loss of their constituents. Designers and planners have to deal with the cynicism of teachers and students. Frameworks were viewed by some case study teachers as a PR exercise to win them back. Most of the case study teachers began by expressing considerable scepticism.

(7) Designers face limited resources for implementing profession development. The expectation that teachers should be able to do more with less applies equally to them. For instance, the amount of time given to the NT F/work project was severely criticised, with teachers pointing out that some outcomes may not become apparent for several years. Thus the tendency is to measure only that which is immediately accessible. Similarly the NT F/work team found it difficult to fulfil all its obligations to visit schools and provide support.

(8) Increasing and persistent bureaucratisation. Instead of seeking opportunities for personalising the curriculum and putting student, rather than curriculum developer, at the centre, bureaucracy has increased. This is a good example of Senge's (1992) contention that the more you push, the system fights back. 'I' statements are rarely encountered, there being a preference for the exclusive 'we'.

The SA Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework

An examination of the SA Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework is particularly revealing.

(1) The Framework imposes an adult construction on learning. For example, students need to understand systems thinking and change. Treatment of complexity and chaos. Emergence of imposed, explicate, patterns and regularities is not problematised.

(2) Note the 'we' of the introduction. Who/what is involved here? Are teachers being called upon to establish or merely prepare for the emergence of these capabilities?

(3) The framework promotes a culture of enforced optimism and positive energies embracing idealism, and utopias.

(4) A designer view of culture is adopted. The framework speaks of 'Reinventing cultures towards renewed world views'. This is a view of culture as 'manufactured', a system capable of being 'cultured'.

(5) Or again, take the notion of 'changing identities'. Ambitious stuff. [NT F/work case studies tell us little of how this might be done with children.]

(6) Business is there in 'initiating enterprise opportunities. The 'entrepreneurial' bourgeoisie writ large.

NT Curriculum Framework Consultation Phase 1a.

The case studies were preceded by extensive and intensive consultation. The NT Curriculum Framework Consultation Package was sent to schools and other key stakeholders in March 2000. The document canvassed schools with regards to the following:

Outcomes-based Education. Schools were asked how familiar they were with outcomes-based education, which models they had used - traditional, transitional or transformational - in the past, the understanding possessed by the community, and whether the Curriculum Framework itself should contain a section relating to outcomes-based education.

Learning Theory. Schools were asked how the NT Curriculum Framework should address the issue of learning theories, whether one theory should underpin the F/Work and who should decide this, and whether the learning theory adopted should be placed up-front or interwoven throughout the document.

Key Principles. Six of these were identified - a developmental approach, flexibility, inclusivity, integral learnings, working together and partnerships, and connections. Schools were asked what their thoughts were on the six principles and then what key principles the F/Work should be based on.

Cross curricula perspectives. This section linked cross curricula perspectives to the Adelaide Declaration on the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century. It sought to determine whether there were too many perspectives, which ones were of particular importance to the school and community, which ones needed to be developed further and how the perspectives should be embedded in the F/Work. Active citizenship, omitted from the original list of perspective, was singled out for comment. The team wanted to know whether the perspectives should be reworked and reduced, and whether they should be made explicit and linked.

Cross curriculum policies. This section focussed on catering for diversity in general and on the role of ESL in the F/Work in particular. It sought feedback on whether schools had an ESL/Languages policy and how this policy was impacting on the classroom. Some eventual changes were foreshadowed such as whether the ESL outcomes should continue to be attached to the English Learning Area Statement or whether a companion document should be produced. Other marginalised groups addressed were Indigenous learners, gifted and talented, special needs and 'gender'.

Integral Learnings. As conceived in the document, integral learnings were 'process-related'. The paper included an Education Queensland discussion paper dealing with the 'New Basics', 'productive pedagogies', and 'rich tasks'. Having established the case for some kind of integral learnings, schools were provided with a number of options: they could either make no reference to cross-disciplinary outcomes; state them as broad goals of education; highlight opportunities to develop attributes throughout the Learning Area outcomes by using icons; have a separate strand appropriately labelled which had explicit links to learning area outcomes through indicators (and hyper-linked text) which clearly tracked the development of these attributes throughout levels or stages of schooling; or totally integrate the learning area outcomes into a process-focussed core. In the event it was these integral learnings which formed the basis for the EsseNTial Learnings. Exactly how these EsseNTial Learnings were incorporated into the case-studies, or not as the case may be, is discussed below.

Learning Areas. This section sought to establish how familiar teachers were with the outcomes for each learning area, what modifications were required, what changes needed to be made to the BACOS documents and the priority that should be given to these changes. Twenty-two BACOS documents were listed.

Stages of Schooling. This section asked schools to consider the main issues involved in grouping levels into broader stages of schooling and asked whether 'alternate levels of accountability outcomes (can be made to) 'work'.

The consultation package was a highly ambitious undertaking and the brief synopsis presented here does not do justice to the scope of the project. For those teachers who took the time to consider it, it brought together many of the issues underlying curriculum restructuring and shaping possible futures. Whilst serving as a consultative document, it also provided a useful resource for in-service work. Not surprisingly, many schools felt that they could not sit on the sidelines and had to be involved in the next stage of the process

Critique of the phase I document

If one were to critique the document it would be possible to draw attention to the following:

• An inadequate treatment of constructivism and the fluid way in which frameworks operate and organic way in which they are created. The bolts and hinges are all too obvious. Frameworks tend toward rigidity.

• The failure to represent the disadvantages of some of the central components such as outcome-based education and developmental learning and progression.

• The failure to address the role of the teacher, particularly in the light of neo-liberal managerialist approaches. If we are sincere in encouraging schools to become transformative and socially critical, rather than just transitional, we require teachers who will be activists. (Sachs, 2001)

• The fact that some choices are represented as either/or when they are not in fact mutually exclusive, as in the section on learning theories, and the ways in which the perspectives might be handled.

• The way in which the preferred direction of the planners can be detected by what it selects for inclusion, the way certain material is presented, and the gaps and omissions which are not acknowledged.

• The danger of perpetuating yet another form of stasis as with any approach which seeks to find definitive answers to the problems facing education and society.

• Some areas are not sufficiently problematised and issues of governance, productivity and performativity are not addressed.

Documents of this kind are susceptible to pressure from lobby groups representing knowledge constitutive interests. Is it significant that in a time of severe disruptions to bilingual education and ESL provision as a result of neo-rightist revisionism in the Northern Territory and the neo-liberal market policies adopted nationally, so much attention should be focussed on ESL as opposed to other distinctive and under-resourced groups? Reynolds (2001) reveals the role played by professional associations in the development of curriculum materials in NSW in the eighties.

Given the team's immediate aim to promote transitional schools, these criticisms may appear unjustified. Whatever its limitations, the consultative process certainly succeeded in focusing the attention of schools on the need for change. From a straightforward pragmatic point of view, the situation where teachers felt unable to cope with the demands of the curriculum and laboured under the weight, both metaphorical and actual, of a plethora of fragmented and apparently unrelated curriculum documents, could not be allowed to continue. Charged with providing leadership and direction, the team provided exactly that and as the case studies demonstrate teachers have applauded what was achieved.

The document implies considerable change to workplace practices, which as Proudfoot (1998) has pointed out in her Queensland research, is a deliberate objective of the second phase of curriculum reform. These changes therefore involve issues of productivity and accountability. From it would develop a new curriculum grammar complete with its own specialist terminology and systemic choices. The way in which teachers grappled with this new grammar and the difficulties and confusions they face in acquiring the new meta-language is the subject of the case studies. One of the effects of the NT Framework Consultation was to encourage the creation of discourse communities (Putnam and Borko, 2000).

The EsseNTial Learnings

These are set out in the attachment. They describe the outcomes that are desirable for ALL Northern Territory students as they move from school to the broader community. They are organised into four 'domains' comprising the Inner Learner at the core and

the Collaborative Learner, the Constructive Learner and the Creative Learner each of which defines or constitutes the Inner Learner. Each is linked to the eventual role the child is expected to play to make Australia a competitive country and gives a new meaning to the term 'productive education'. The Inner Learner is a self-directed and reflective thinker but only in so far as this advances the outcomes in the other three domains. Hence, the creative learner is looked to as a persevering and resourceful innovator, the constructive learner is a thoughtful producer and contributor, and the collaborative learner will prove a valuable group member with effective communication skills.

Analysing an outcome

Time does not permit an exhaustive analysis of each of these domains. It is therefore proposed to focus on one particular outcome, and to critique the band scales and key growth points associated with it. The outcome selected is the first of those for the collaborative learner: Listens attentively and considers contributions and viewpoints of others when sharing ideas and opinions. The accompanying band scales and key growth points can be found in the attachment.

• Potential for ethnocentrism. For example, the expected behaviours for attentive listening and speaking at Band 1 require the student to look at the speaker and listener. This may be culturally inappropriate and intimidating in some situations. Indeed by the time the child has reached Band 3, 'the significance of body language messages from different cultures' is acknowledged. The same could also be said about the forms of leadership envisaged and the neglect of indigenous leadership and entrepreneurship.

• Artificiality of the banding process. Inferencing, for example, is restricted to Band 5. I would submit this is a much earlier, necessary process.

• Assumption of shared values. At Band 5 the child is called upon to 'respond appropriately' to ideas and opinions expressed in public places. At Band 3, the child is expected to 'respond constructively' to alternative ideas and viewpoints. Homogeneity of response is not far away. Schooling young people in the moral economy of appropriateness ensures advantage for particular groups.

• A Habermasian theory of communication and social action. At Band 4 for example, the child has to set aside their own point of view and respect the opinion of others. In an agonistic situation this may not be the best way to proceed. The outcomes assume an ideal speech community. Incommensurability and the limits of dialogue are not addressed.

• The relationship of the individual to the group is not determined. The rights of the individual against those of the group are not made clear. There appears to be no provision for silence or withdrawal. Sharing is imposed. Certain behaviours are to be 'prompted'.

• Surveillance. The codification of behaviour in this way and the insistence of the language raises the spectre of surveillance, the approach of a Brave New World without 'the wonders in't'. This could be aggravated by the approach to profiling which is adopted. Self-esteem and self-worth could suffer from the identification of deficiencies.

• Action Learning. There are also potential problems with the mechanistic, plan-do-reflect model of action learning adopted which does not fit well with what we know of the creative process.

• Reductionism. The approach adopted suggests the existence of a linear, responsive, controllable universe or system, and that by adopting these particular outcomes a particular social future will result. This kind of thinking ignores 'the complex ways in which the system feeds back on itself, enfolding all that has happened, magnifying slight variances, encoding it in the system's memory - and prohibiting prediction for ever'. (Wheatley, 1992, cited in West-Burnham, 2000, p71).

Some of these concerns and reservations can be identified in the case studies. None of them necessarily invalidate the approach adopted but they do suggest some cautions which need to be picked up in any curriculum design activity. As Fullan pointed out nearly twenty years ago, 'schools routinely undertake reforms for which they have neither the institutional nor the individual competence, and they resolve this problem by trivialising the reforms, changing the language they use and modifying superficial structures around the practice, but without changing the practice itself'. (Fullan, 1982, cited in Elmore, 2000, p43).

THE RESULTS OF THE CASE STUDIES

Difficulties in getting started

One of the case study teachers wrote down the comments made by colleagues at a unit group meeting immediately following the introduction of the first draft by the CBS team. They show the teachers desperately trying to make some sort of connection with their previous work, and seeking to rationalise the process so that it could be contained and made more manageable:

Similar to First Steps curriculum.

Is it the same as six thinking hats?

Our kids do that - we do it all the time.

This is obvious - just normal teaching practices.

We already do this but we don't plan for it.

Isn't it great! All that work we do with getting kids to work in teams and to collaborate and solve problems is finally being recognised.

Sounds like more work to me.

How do you assess this stuff?

Practically every case study referred to the confusion and frustration that surrounded the introduction of the project. For one teacher, the timing of the introduction of the first draft document in December 2000 was bad.

It was the last two weeks of school and everyone was extremely busy with reports and school concerts. The meeting was at the end of a typical hectic school day and no one was in the right frame of mind.

We all seemed to nod and murmur positive responses but in actual fact, I for one, had no idea what they were talking about and I really didn't want to know either as I was more concerned about getting my reports done.

The creation of confusion is closely aligned with management by stress (Robertson, 2000). One of the results is to get teachers to doubt themselves and their own capabilities so that they are forced to call for additional external support. In this particular case the confusion was added to because these particular teachers had been issued quite inadvertently with the wrong bands setting out the Key Growth Points for their particular group. They discovered this during the Christmas holidays but were unable to get hold of the correct copies. In their view they needn't have bothered because

when the CSB came to visit next time, we were given a new draft document to get familiar with and the others went in the bin that we had so dutifully scribbled all over with our suggestions. "One step forward, two steps back!!"

This new document was subjected to quite exhaustive analysis by the teaching group. They looked closely at the provisions made in First Steps continuum documents and the Northern Territory Outcomes Profiles and compared these with the new document. Not surprisingly, they discovered a strong unacknowledged resemblance between the documents and concluded that 'the frameworks (sic!) was just a rehashing of the same ideas with new jargon or wording, except for the essential learning area'. Further examination revealed that the EsseNTial Learnings were already in the profiles for the different subject areas.

Armed with this knowledge, the case study teacher launched into programming and set her program up just as she had always done using the same headings.

I went to the next meeting all proud that I had done so much and ended up in tears because my whole weekend went into preparing the stupid thing and it was all wrong. So I burst into tears and stormed out of the room saying I don't need this - I have too much other work to do!!! Time was a huge factor, so back to the drawing board and have another go. More tears because I was completely confused. I had put everything in the wrong columns. I was sitting at the computer crying, tears rolling down my cheeks as I tried to get my stupid computer to print out how the CSB person showed me how it needed to be done.

Part of the pressure stems from problems with getting the computer to print out properly. Most of us hate wasting paper. Then the ink ran out on her and she was ready to quit but being a real battler she wouldn't let it beat her.

I skipped the idea of the CSB person and went back to how I knew how to use my computer. It may not look as good, or as well set out, but all the information is there. Subject areas had to be learning areas - what I had as activities were learning strategies - don't put EsseNTial learnings in every subject area - turn the page sideways - what I had as assessment was demonstration of learning. Jargon. Jargon. Jargon. That is all it is. I still teach the same, the results are the same - just jargon!!! No more tears - I can do this - got it done.

But of course when CSB get hold of it, it is not all done by any means.

"Great, but how are you going to do this?" I have to write in all the details e.g., - demonstrate to the whole class - brainstorm … What I took for good teaching practice has to be written down. Back to the computer.

The teacher was clearly appreciative of the incredible support. pedagogical and emotional, she received from the CBS member attached to the school.

I was given lots of support and examples of other case studies and program planning from her and I found working with her on a one-to-one basis much better than working in the group because everyone was eager to tell how they did it. I find this very intimidating when three people are all talking at me at once and saying "You silly chook, it's easy"! It's easy when you understand and know how to do it, but until you get a grasp on it, it is extremely frustrating to be wasting all your precious time doing and redoing. The day I had off to do my case study with her and program was the most valuable day. That day it all fell into place for me.

This teacher was not alone. Having suffered initially from information overload, another expresses the feelings of frustration and apprehension she suffered 'whilst working towards the right path in my trek to identifying what the new NT Frameworks (sic) was all about'.

This teacher also relates the conversations she had with herself. She too thought she was getting somewhere, having chosen the Collaborative Learner and picked out an indicator. Then, as she is walking home, the implications hit her:

Do I have separate sessions with my class: (1) Doing esseNTial learning lessons? (2) Try and fulfil my original plan and do the rest in catch up time? or (3) Panic 'cause I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing?

These extracts clearly indicate that the teachers believe there is only one right way to do the programming and that this is in the heads of the CBS. There are specified headings for columns, a correct way of formatting, and an imposed notion of what is good teaching practice. This form of structured control is contrary to constructivist beliefs and is part of the unchallenged, taken-for-granted, workplace practice which discourages genuine transformation and is at best transactional. On this measure transformational becomes transforming your work into the way I do mine and teachers are deficient until they can accomplish this. Professionalism takes on a new meaning.

Incorporating The EsseNTial Learnings

None of the case studies submitted as part of the Independent Study unit, used the EsseNTial Learnings as the major focus of the program. Generally speaking teachers believed they were already addressing the EsseNTial Learnings anyway and this, as will be discussed later, is cause for considerable concern. In one case the EsseNTial Learnings were deliberately ignored as they were 'not part of our aim'. 'Without having formalised it, we already do a lot of essential learnings activities in our programs, it is just a matter of identifying them' and that could wait until the programs had been completed at the end of the year. This teacher concluded that 'Science teachers are never going to prioritise Essential Learning outcomes over science outcomes' which were to be given priority on every occasion. This quotation demonstrates the tremendous difficulties the planners have in breaking down the exercise of disciplinary power which the BACOS documents perpetuate. Note that the narrow provincialism and competitiveness evidenced by the capitalisation of

NT on the presumed spurious grounds of intellectual property are not supported by this particular teacher.

Generally, teachers look for similarities between previous approaches to planning and programming and the new approach. One teacher used an old program 'with modifications written in' which was said to be a feature of the planning of other teachers in the school. Finding indicators similar to those that were already embedded in the program, enabled him to embraces the framework more willingly and the fact that assessment procedures were left to the teacher meant that he could continue to use those that were used before.

Not all teachers had this prior experience to draw on. One managed to escape university with degree in hand without ever seeing a curriculum document. She then engaged in relief teaching but still no sight of a curriculum document. Then, after spending some time on a remote Aboriginal community in Centralia where she undertook some video conferencing and tutoring, she finally made the move to Darwin where for the first time she saw the curriculum she was teaching:

I was presented with a large white folder and Wal ah! it contained, gasp …BACOS documents! …

Amazingly I was never approached by executive staff to produce my program in the past nor was I ever questioned. I think it is phenomenal that I was able to endure the predicament, if you like, for as long as I did, unintentionally of course. So it leads me to wonder how many other teachers have experienced similar circumstances.

This teacher may appear to be talking about a totally different era, but these experiences are recent and not unexceptional. No wonder she undergoes a 'confusing mind shift' as she moves from virtually no back up materials, … to 'being thrown in the deep end to trying to fathom out this complex piece of jargon, titled Curriculum Framework'.

The extent and scope of the programs devised

I take the view that programs are first and foremost bureaucratic documents, hangovers from the days of factory schools and inspectorial systems. Whilst necessary in the sense of pre-planning and forecasting, it is naive of planners, managers and those charged with accountability, to claim that they represent anything else but embellished fictions with teachers writing themselves and their students into the plot. It is therefore time to question whether the approach to planning and programming adopted in Australian schools is not largely responsible for the present crisis in teachers' work, and the failure of efforts to introduce improved work-place practices. In my view planning has become fetishised. Programs are things of beauty and desire, things to be exhibited and admired, symbols of power, intricate in their scope, elegant in their content, breathtaking in their interconnectivity, spectacular in their cross-referencing. Integrated and complete, holistic and integral, bewildering in their complexity. But as many overworked department heads know they are socio-dramas, scripted in advance, in which teachers and children have their many parts to play. Rationalising of the curriculum was intended to re-script, to pare down, to edit out, but this does not appear to have occurred. The approach adopted has ensured they remain routinised and pro-form-alised. In fact so dependent were they on the proforma, that some teachers could not begin planning until one arrived.

From the administrators' point of view, the program promises performance. It highlights the acts and scenes of the drama about to unfold. It is a written oath of allegiance, a testament to the wisdom of the new planners, evidence of a new understanding of the new dogmas

(Apple, 2000). It creates an expectancy. It provides something to judge against, evidence to produce in the face of complaining parents. And it is much easier to assess within the office particularly if the actual classroom enactment cannot be observed.

Whilst recognising the possibilities of empowerment for professional, conscientious and well-informed teachers in developing their own programs, one case-study teacher hankered after the provision of a prescriptive program for those 'stressed, tired, or new to the school community'. That way, she concluded, 'you are likely to get some outcomes achieved if you provide a program than if you expect them to develop one themselves'.

The same concern for direction manifested itself in a consideration of the EsseNTial Learnings. 'This is one area we need some more instruction about. Just to clear up any uneasiness that teachers may have about recording and reporting the EsseNTial Leaning outcomes, which I do.' In view of the condemnation of Anecdotal Records as unreliable by one senior teacher, one can understand the untenable position many teachers felt themselves to be in.

Some teachers clearly welcomed being told what to do, and not to have to take the hard decisions for themselves. One teacher wrote:

One of the biggest advantages of the CFWD is that the subject areas are contained within one document so I don't have to drag around a crate full of documents and I don't have to sift through document after document to do my program … We save lots of time not having to wade through several different documents and reading page after page of jargon to find what we are looking for. Most of the hard work has been done for us and we can spend more time writing up lessons or activities and making or finding resources for students… Once I learn how to use the internet, I will be able to cut and paste, saving heaps of time in typing up programs. (Emphasis added)

This is the technicist talking, the ideal operative from a managerialist point of view, whereby learning is (word)-processed, reduced to bite-sized pieces for easy predigestion, kept simple (KISS is a favorite term amongst curriculum development teams), made interchangeable to accommodate slot-filling using approved templates, and fortuitously 'inter-netted'. Professional learning is externalised and requires external validation rather than being internalised and made ready for transformatative

Much time and effort was therefore spent on trying to find out what was in the heads of the planners and what the planners actually wanted. The Framework team was generally thought to have their own agenda. Some teachers thought they were being positioned by the team and resisted strongly, hence, the language of some of the case studies is oppositional and confrontational rather than relational, whereas in others it is conciliatory and accepting.

The need for workplace change and the dimensions of this change does not yet appear to have been fully realised by the teachers involved in these case studies. There is a clear reluctance to embrace any moves which might result in an increased work load. There is always insufficient time to devote to the 'subject'. Conversely, where the Framework can be clearly seen to save time and introduce operating efficiencies, it has been widely embraced.

One of the big benefits I see for the CFWD, especially for our school, it that all teachers will be using the same document from preschool through to Year 10. For our school this will be a big advantage as the speciality teachers such as PE, music and IT work with all the children right across the school. Now

we will be able to program plan with these teachers using the same document.

It may be significant that throughout this particular case study the Framework support person attached to the school by Curriculum Branch is referred to as 'the lecturer'.

The use of outcomes focused learning

Outcomes focused learning was only adopted very tentatively by those involved. One case-study teacher questioned 'how realistic this goal is?'. For most it was a question of time, energy and resources, and we might add, willingness. The enormity of the task is summed up by a teacher working on the ESL outcomes:

We have struggled to keep together a group of keen, dedicated teachers who are all teaching the same ESL students. There is no question in anybody's mind that we should be using the ESL outcomes in our programs, but after 9 month of trying to incorporate ESL outcomes in our planning, we are unable to do so. Why?

• Teachers are not equipped with the knowledge and skills on how to write such a program.

• The task is too big and complicated. • There is no time to fully rewrite all the programs for a year to ensure gradual

progress, only to have to do it again for a new group of students next year. • Attendance is so irregular that the group of students changes all the time, therefore

their ESL outcomes change all the time.

Remember that this project is only trying to implement the ESL part of the framework. What will it be like when we start including subject area outcomes, Essential Learnings and special needs outcomes?

At this school, behavioural and attendance issues appeared to get in the way of focusing on subject outcomes, and the need to individualise planning to cater for all ability levels proved daunting. Initially school etiquette and right regard for school procedures and rules retained prior importance.

Deficiencies in teachers' pedagogical and content-based knowledge also hampered the use of outcomes-based approaches in ESL. Indeed, one of the successful outcomes of the project in the view of the participants, was the growing competence of teachers in using ESL strategies in their teaching. Professional confidence (Proudfoot, 1998) is essential if shifts in curriculum design are to be accepted, but part of the problem was that some teachers 'did not feel confident in what the outcomes said'. A lot of the statements were 'vague and open to interpretation' and still left the participants navigating on the basis of 'a collective gut feeling'. As evidence of this the following outcomes statements from the writing macroskill were cited:

• Beginning Level 3. Learners communicate in short simple texts using familiar language.

• Level 1. Learners communicate simple messages in familiar topic areas using copied texts and well-rehearsed language and drawing on prior knowledge of writing.

• Level 3. Learners write short basic texts using a limited repertoire of spoken and written English.

In her case-study the teacher wrote:

We found it very unclear as to what the difference was between these statements. Looking at the indicators did not give us a much clearer picture as 'write short, simple texts of personal significance' and 'write with different purposes' (BL3) seems very similar to 'write a familiar story or event with scaffolding support' (L1) and 'with support write short simple texts for different purposes' (L2). So if a learner has used vocabulary from the board to write a paragraph recounting their trip to Jabiru and a paragraph describing a Kangaroo, are they a BL3, L1 or L2?

From the point of view of a teacher unfamiliar with ESL, the difficulties are clear. In order to achieve the objectives/indicators one needs to understand something about psycho-linguistics ('the personal significance of textual utterances'), socio-linguistics and the importance of context, systemic linguistics which involves genre and repertoire theory, and theories of natural language relating to specific methodological issues such as scaffolding support and rehearsal, as well as a knowledge of taxonomic syllabus construction whereby outcomes/descriptors present in an earlier stage are subsumed in successive stages.

Even so, the way in which these outcomes have been drawn up is open to question, and that was one of the objectives of the trialling in the first place. The teachers confronted with the ESL outcomes for the first time are contesting them in exactly the way that was intended, even if this is in a technicist manner.

Where teachers felt confident in their content knowledge, they felt empowered to rewrite the objectives as in the case of a group of science teachers focussing on Working Scientifically.

We found the outcomes to be too long-winded and impossible to assess in the current format. We decided to make them shorter and more user friendly

Space does not permit an exhaustive examination of the changes adopted, but the group introduced a system of categories and codes which allowed them to detect gaps and omissions and insert new outcomes to ensure a clear and improved sequence. In the process the group was forced to confront the distinction between what constitutes an outcome and what constitutes an indicator. In the event, they decided to disregard the advice of the Frameworks team member who visited the school to monitor progress, as they felt that

[I]n this case, the difference between outcomes and indicators was a semantic point and that we would proceed with what we were all comfortable with.

In the same way, the group found it very difficult to break with traditional views whereby the syllabus becomes dominant and coverage of all outcomes is essential, based on some consensus on what constitutes 'the average student of a certain year level'. Content-based topic tests designed to 'assess Science facts learned and spelling of key words' were retained. This attitude is antipathetic to a constructivist way of knowing and suggests a positivistic, technicist, functionalist approach.

The case studies reveal an endless series of continuing dichotomies: dichotomies between knowledge and skills, content and process, theory (test) and practice (accomplishment); cognition and affect, competence and performance; performance and achievement; success and failure; mastery and incompetence; ability and disability, just to identify the most obvious. Integral learning removes these dichotomies. There is no analysis of the ways in

which these oppositions can in fact be integrated, how one is determined in the presence of the other. Priorities are accorded by the teacher which perpetuates these dichotomies. Hence

[B]ecause of the time limitations of the program the concern was more on trying to give the students the background knowledge to be able to do the task successfully and so unfortunately the essential learning areas were somewhat neglected (and) … the skills were more prominent.

Once again the power of the disciplines reappears. For this teacher, the Essential Learnings are 'what we want our students to learn from studying our subject' (emphasis added). It is also interesting that in evaluating outcomes, detailed outcomes for subject-based knowledge are referred to whereas the essential learnings are generalised as 'demonstrated aspects'.

Another interesting observation is that when discussing the need for assessment criteria and some form of benchmarking, evidence was put forward which drew implicitly on the EsseNTial Learnings without referring to them. The benchmarks, assuming they were drawn up to be supportive and inclusive, 'would give struggling students a chance to succeed without jeopardising the skills of the more talented students' and build their self-confidence.

Several teachers believed their attempts to implement the framework has not been successful. In one case the pupils said they did not have time to explore the issues or perform together, showed themselves unwilling to take risks, and did not fulfil their responsibilities as group members. This does not necessarily invalidate or reflect badly on the program. These are developmental processes, and in the case of pupils who might have felt 'shamed', are affected by cultural dimensions which cut across these processes. The assessment merely points to what needs to be done in the future. However, such is the nature of accountability in a managerialist system, teachers feel they have been set up for failure. Management by stress proceeds by the inculcation of guilt. (Hargreaves, 1994)

Nowhere in the case studies is the ideological basis of outcomes-focussed learning challenged. Outcomes based approaches are increasingly associated with a particular form of managerial thinking based on a 'market' model with a prescribed product and desired, externally determined, ends which can inhibit the full engagement of participants as persons. Pupils are seen as objects to be processed, teachers become operatives, and learning becomes a charade.

The nature of partnership and collaboration

There is little evidence of enduring partnerships and productive collaboration in the small sample of case studies under review. The reasons for this vary according to the particular site in which the trial was undertaken. After a promising start, one case study teacher attributed the decline to fading enthusiasm in the light of staff changes with key players leaving the school, the transfer of the ESL specialist who possessed the necessary credibility, the lack of success in planning for ESL outcomes, and the difficulties in securing further professional development as originally promised.

Another teacher commented on partnerships from the point of view of sustainability and commented 'I didn't see many partnerships develop between teachers that went on to utilise this'. Collaboration was restricted to comparing ideas, presenting formats and discussing what was found in the curriculum. Nevertheless the possibilities of 'real' partnerships developing as a result of the trial were envisaged. Case study teachers attributed the lack of collaboration to the following:

• Individual demands for total autonomy. The case studies reveal instances where individual teachers failed to adopt or implement decisions made by the group, where different content matter was substituted.

• Perceived lack of support from departmental heads and senior executive staff. Instances were reported where the professional judgement of the group with regards to placing students at particular ESL levels was ignored with apparently disastrous results - emotional disturbances, truancy, academic failure. In one case the use of anecdotal records was questioned.

• Confused and contradictory understandings with regard to this new educational 'philosophy'. In one group there appeared to be a lack of shared understanding of the approach adopted or an unwillingness to accept what others in the team were attempting. This impacted badly on the ability of the group to work as a team. Individuals insisted on their autonomy to proceed without reference to the group. Privatism, separatism and individualism continued unchecked and people talked past each other. The outcome of all this was that student achievement suffered and students 'did not necessarily learn the new outcomes'. This is a problematic area as the trial was not designed to evaluate student achievement and productivity, nor were integral assessment techniques a focus of the framework.

Many of these difficulties resulted from the way in which the outcomes were framed which worked against an integral, constructivist approach. Hence,

One of the teachers started to teach all the outcomes all the time. He would throw in a practical because it taught students how to use equipment when the outcomes were research-based. He would focus on Science in everyday life when they should have been teaching students how to plan an investigation. It was pointed out to this teacher that he was free to swap outcomes between topics at the start of a topic and in negotiations with other teachers teaching the same program. However, if he just scrapped one, didn't tell anyone and didn't incorporate it into another program then his students would be disadvantaged.

The teacher writing this case study interpreted this as opposition to outcomes-based education. 'Obstinacy' was in fact the word used .

There were cases where the lead teachers, those taking the initiative in trialling the framework, were clearly too far ahead of the rest of the group, or were unable to convince others of the value of the proposed changes and explain them. In such cases there was little demonstration of mutuality and reciprocity.

Not surprisingly then, things 'started to fall apart'.

From then on meetings were perceived as a chore (something to develop headaches for), help was misconstrued as criticism, frustration led to tension and people became disillusioned with each other and the project.

The teacher concerned struggled on with the support of another teacher until that teacher accepted a transfer. Without the support of her senior, she was left to ensure that programs, assignments and topic tests were appropriate from an ESL point of view. Teachers no longer entered into professional discussion and team work became limited to asking for feedback on drafts.

The relationship between action research and Professional Development.

Cummings and Hustler (1986) identify two attractive features of action research. Firstly action research starts with attempts to uncover 'problems' or matters of concern as perceived by teachers, rather than those perceived and conceptualised by those not directly involved in the day-to-day business of classroom life, or who wish to impose a centralised departmental or Board of Studies consideration. (p38). Secondly, action research 'cannot be preplanned or pre-structured ... As the research develops, so do ideas develop which lead to action of some sort, which leads to more information and analysis and more ideas and so forth' (p39). Action continually feeds back into the situation in unforeseen directions. What seemed important or valid at one stage in the research, may turn out not to be so. Action-researchers are continually engendering hypotheses, monitoring their own collaboration, prespecifying problems, and anticipating what will happen.

Taping discussions and meetings and talking through the transcripts is one way of record keeping which can be used to review the process of collaboration and communication. Action research is about learning to dialogue, and the emergence of an idea/concept/ technique so that it is jointly owned. It involves learning how to take oneself out of the equation and allow others to occupy the space. It deals with competing discourses and differing ideologies, and makes them visible, showing us how professional knowledge grows and develops. In its form and scope, it reveals the taken-for-granted knowledge and unquestioned assumptions, foreclosure and fixity of meaning. Cummings and Hustler (1986) conclude with this observation: 'The point about taken-for-granted professional knowledge is precisely that it is taken-for-granted, and that it does close off certain aspects of how a teacher operates.'

McTaggart (1991) distinguishes between technical action research, practical action research and emancipatory action research. Most action research projects incorporate all three aspects. At first sight the current project might be considered as an extension of more technical and practical techniques to promote planning and programming using frameworks, but it is much more than this. The current project could be termed emancipatory in three ways: (1) as part of the movement to rationalise the curriculum, it emancipates teachers from the heavy weight and complexity of the existing curriculum documents, (2) as part of the movement towards inclusivity and individualised learning, it promises a more flexible curriculum which will be more just and equitable, and (3), with the centrality of the Inner Learner and the renewed emphasis on the self-directed and reflective thinker, it promises to emancipate the pupil from the classroom.

Day (1997) emphasises that action research is a highly social and interactive activity which involves contestation, conflict, and perturbation. Action research is a demanding and rigorous process in which our actions are kept under constant review and scrutiny. To succeed, we need to move beyond comfortable collaboration.

There is little reference in the case studies to the principles of action research which were to be employed in the project. One teacher who did address this issue, lamented the fact that she had let slip an opportunity for professional development. She found that some of the basic conditions for initiating and sustaining an action research process did not exist within her school. Relating her comments back to Grundy (1995) she found

• That action research groups need to be committed, professional learning groups. In her case "none of us were really committed to the task. It was not discussed at staff meetings as to whether or not we should, or could, do the piloting. We were volunteered by our assistant principal and told we were doing it".

• That action groups benefit from a facilitator who is an outsider from the actual research group. This facilitator could have come from the parent group thus raising the question of who is part of the action. As it was, the teacher found the experience 'rather lonely stressful work' and there was no meaningful support within the school. The social practices that constitute action research were not engaged in.

• That if a thorough reconnaisance had been carried out, time pressures could have been reduced and she quotes Grundy to the effect that

As teachers our time, energy and resources are limited. Therefore we need to focus our attention carefully upon what needs to be changed. It is often better to take some time to decide on the target of action than to take action impetuously. (Grundy, 1995, p13)

• That greater attention should be given to deciding who should be involved. In her case student and involvement would have been beneficial.

• That although it was considered important to keep a journal 'no one did'. The preliminary readings emphasised the importance of record keeping (O'Hanlon, 1997). Our memories are fallible and liable to distortion and unless we maintain accounts of what occurred valuable information gets lost. The problem is that critique is not part of current workplace practice and that the culture of schools works against a collaborative action research model. Teachers believed that they simply couldn't find the time to undertake the work required. The very way schools are run and administered in the managerialist state works against the concept of the teacher-researcher.

This section has revealed the difficulties schools experienced in adopting an action research model. One wonders if the culture of the schools had embraced such a model, the outcomes would have been different.

Assessment issues

There is some indication that measurable skills and skill indicators took priority over the esseNTial learnings. The extent to which the EsseNTial Learnings can be measured, calibrated and scaled remained open to question. Attempts to classify particular behaviours as belonging to particular stages, levels or bands perplexed a number of teachers.

Most teachers would already consider they work on most of these outcomes, and I am sure they do, but it is on an ad hoc basis and teachers do not include these outcomes in their programming and definitely do not formally assess these outcomes.

Teachers were aware that many elements of teachers' work cannot be reduced to the demands of efficiency, predictability, calculability and control, and that schools are social institutions which do not encourage or enable such factors.

In fact assessment proved a bugbear, something which few of the teachers engaged with critically with the exception of a teacher focussing on creative performance in music.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

In this section I argue that the curriculum framework movement has served to promote increased governance and an extension of the regulatory state, based on an increased reliance on managerialism. In doing this it has further disempowered teachers and increased their dependency on centralised curriculum design teams. At the same time one can detect a resistance on the part of teachers to any form of transformational education that may be involved. I then examine the contradictions and unacknowledged tensions produced by the extension of managerialism before looking at the limitations of curriculum reform.

Governance and the regulatory state

The emergence of curriculum frameworks is part of the creation of the common world educational culture that Robertson (2000) addresses. Teachers are selected to work with the planners and designers to implement the frameworks, and become part of 'a mediation process which amounts to a political struggle over meaning and affect'.

Such a process has led to the progressive incorporation of teachers into the state as it seeks to regulate social change and direct social futures. In doing this, 'the state both mediates and is transformed by social and political change (and) attempts to institutionalise a new set of relationships forged prior to the new social settlement'.

Drawing on the work of Anglietta (1979), Robertson (2000) demonstrates how the regulatory state seeks to set in place 'a mode of regulation consisting of a body of interiorised rules and social processes and institutional structures' (p35). Although there has been an apparent democratisation of the curriculum, this has only taken place with the 'guided involvement' of teachers as the case studies clearly demonstrate.

Kirk and MacDonald (2001) reveal how teachers ownership of curriculum change in Australia is circumscribed by the anchoring of their authority to speak on curriculum matters in the local context of implementation as the case studies demonstrate. Drawing a distinction between instructional and regulative discourse, Kirk and MacDonald show how Australian teachers are effectively prevented from working as recontextualising agents. The fact that teachers are recruited to work with curriculum design teams does not mean that teachers as a whole become part of the regulative process. One result of this is to promote the politics of curriculum and what Kirk and MacDonald call 'positionality' (p562) whereby teachers are positioned and obtain their identity through where they stand in the interpretation of curriculum materials. Desperate attempts to maintain subject allegiance revealed in the case studies are also indicative, on this analysis, of positionality and the shaping of professional identity.

Framework projects are the first step in managing teachers' commitment to the new settlement. As Smyth (1991) puts it 'steerage and policy directions are framed from outside the schools, with teachers being incorporated (or coopted) to work out the implementation details' (cited in Robertson 2000, p143). At the same time, major local, social, fiscal and industrial crises are deflected away from the state (p143) and onto the schools.

Modes of governance are reshaped in an attempt by states to manage their increased vulnerability to risk in a turbulent and unpredictable global economy. Governments have been successful in relocating the management of the consequences of those risks to other sites. They have, however, maintained close control of the overall framing and output functions such as policy, curriculum, assessment and audit, thus reducing teacher's professional status and autonomy.

This process increases the technicist elements of teachers' work and means that the

spaces available for professional autonomy are reduced. In productive education, work between teachers and students is given a commodity exchange value (p142) and the means for protest or complaint against the system are removed to such an extent that anyone resisting can be accused of threatening the survival of their colleagues or the school.

Neo-liberal visions of quasi-markets are usually accompanied by neo-conservative pressures to regulate content and behaviour through such things as national curricula, national standards, and national systems of assessment. The planners find themselves engaged in the regulation of knowledge, values and the body and promotion of new forms of normalisation, surveillance and the construction of the self. This is the regulatory state insistent on the constant production of evidence that one is in effect, embracing the new dogmas. (Robertson, 2000, p234). Alongside of this is the evaluative state, insistent on the constant production of evidence that one is making an enterprise of oneself. (Robertson, 2000, p235, drawing on Ollsen). The planners determine what knowledge, values, and behaviours should be standardised and officially defined as legitimate (p235).

Realisation of this was responsible for the outcry against outcomes-based education on the part of religious groups in the United States (Manno, 1994). In the Northern Territory, however, the denominational schools have gone along with the Framework approach. The reasons for this are complex but include funding and financial difficulties faced by the smaller denominational schools, falling enrolments particularly in rural areas, and perceived opportunities to shape the emotional, spiritual and moral content of the curriculum in ways which will fulfil their mission, particularly as teachers concerned believe they have been implementing the outcomes all along. For them, the hidden curriculum has been legitimated.

Disempowerment and dependency

The case studies suggest that rather than empowering teachers and making them transformative, the introduction of frameworks is leading to their disempowerment through the promotion of dependency. This gives rise to a number of questions such as: To what extent can teachers provide for their own professional development? Can the action research model provide for growth and transformation? To what extent can the dependence of schools on centralised curriculum development bodies be reduced?

These are very complex and difficult questions. Given the neo-rightist return to an exhausted and discredited hierarchical leadership model, and the neo-Fordist management practices adopted, it is doubtful if much can be achieved in spite of the close, supportive, caring relationships established by the Framework team.

As Proudfoot (1998) found, teachers may 'effectively collude in the diminution of their professional autonomy by unquestioningly [or unwittingly] accepting government directives which limit or channel the scope of their own creativity'. This is true even if in the case of denominational schools in which the teachers are not directly employed by or responsible to government.

Constructivist approaches do not appear to have been understood and there is still a feeling that there is a right way of doing things and that this remains in the heads of the planners. Consequently instead of becoming transformational, teachers are reduced to reproducing somebody else's design on the assumption that there can only be one correct interpretation of the text. Multiple interpretations are only encouraged providing they 'fit' within pre-established tolerance levels. Support is accorded to teachers on that basis. Indeed, to encourage too much individualism detracts from the development of common standards and

makes it difficult to agree on implementation. (Putnam and Borko, 2000 citing Ball (1994) on 'style shows').This is true no matter what curriculum design is adopted.

Resisting transformation

Claims by teachers that they have been implementing the EsseNTial Learnings all along are an immediate cause for concern and suggest that the rationale underlying the introduction of the new curriculum has not been adopted. Elmore (2000, p31) draws our attention to the fact that attempts to change the stable patterns of the core of schooling have usually been unsuccessful on anything more than a small scale. Such comments may indicate a generalised resistance to moving out of the comfort zone. Alternatively teachers may be suspicious of indirect attempts to change the direction and nature of teachers' work. More seriously there may be no realisation of how such innovations are explicitly connected to fundamental changes in the way knowledge is constructed, the shifts in power relationships and divisions of responsibility which must follow, and changes to the interactional processes which compose the core.

Some commentators believe the EsseNTial Learnings have brought the hidden curriculum into the open. Many of the normative attitudes on which the hidden curriculum operates have now been acknowledged and are open to challenge. Explicit connections have been made between desired behaviours and ways to inculcate these. If teachers have always been incorporating the EsseNTial Learnings into their work, why are they now such an important focus of the Framework? What is driving the change? Is there now another more insidious hidden curriculum which relates to the technicist, managerialist considerations of fast or global capitalism?

In his depiction of the contemporary English scene, Scott (2000) points to the dominance of a technicist view of education, a tacit acceptance of the need to centralise decision-making, a sectionalist view of educational deliberation, a behavioural-objectives view of curriculum, a behaviourist view of human behaviour, a reductionist methodology which determines how it is viewed and how the discourse is constructed, a marginalisation of debates about the aims and objectives of education, and a misunderstanding of the equity debate. How does the NT measure up?

Contradictions of the curriculum design process

In the NT situation we can detect a determination to move on beyond these obstacles to transformative education. However it appears that these moves have been appropriated by policy makers resulting in a number of glaring contradictions which must eventually destabilise the curriculum. These contradictions stem from the state's own policy-making activities and the clash between the state's political project and the professional project of teachers. (Robertson, 2000)

These contradictions include:

• The promotion of the Inner Learner coupled with a view of the notional self and predetermined behavioural outcomes ushering in a new regime of surveillance and control. The promotion of reflectivity is assumed to lead to shared outcomes and understandings, and it is interesting that the term reflexive is not employed, the preference being for reflective.

• A leaning towards collaboration, interdependence and partnership associated with the continuation of Enlightenment values of unbridled privatism, competition and individualism.

• The recognition of EsseNTial Learnings in shaping social futures is corrupted by detailed (and questionable) developmental continuums and outcomes.

• A behaviourist emphasis on outcomes or traditional objectives disguised and rewritten as achievement indicators.

• A recognition of the social construction of knowledge coupled with the desire to ensure that such a construction conforms to the managerialist and functionalist desires of the planners.

• A belief in multiculturalism and tolerance undermined by the adoption of cultural behaviours which are assumed to be universal but might cut across those of other groups, a point reinforced by Scott (2000) when he writes that the levels identified in framework documents are simply 'ways of ordering conceptual complexity developed by particular educational regimes at particular times and in particular places,' and which, we might add, are designed to advantage particular groups at particular times.

• A holistic, integral view of knowledge vitiated by a sectionalist, disciplinary view of knowledge that forms the basis of the BACOS milkcrate.

• The adoption of quasi-democratic procedures to determine curriculum whilst retaining outmoded, heirarchical structures and approaches to leadership which undermine the very reforms the process is meant to bring about. Some aspects of designing social futures are off-limits;

• The well-meaning, collegial, supportive approach to professional development which seeks to empower teachers is compromised by a perception that there is one right way of doing things. This results in insecurity and dependency.

In my view these contradictions result from the unhealthy influence of managerialism on the one hand, and politically exerted pressures for governance on the other which ensures the continuance of a disguised form of control with an accompanying disregard of professional views. The problem with designing social futures is that if the planners get it wrong, the future will end. It is possible to design a future with no future to which there will be no going back.

Frameworks are not simply out there waiting to be discovered or unearthed. They are not pre-existing or 'natural'. Frameworks are subject to framing, both in the artistic sense of framing the picture, but also in the judicial sense of framing a suspect. Frameworks are constructs, not edifices.

Unacknowledged tensions

Not surprisingly, these contradictions produce a number of tensions which are not always publicly acknowledged or addressed. Firstly, there is a continuing tension between the desire of the managerialists and their entrepreneurial supporters for schoolwide or systemwide change on the one hand, and the degree to which local, individual, contextualised views of the individual school with its own personality, ethos and culture of which teachers are justifiably proud and protective, can be tolerated.

Secondly, there is no consideration in the document as to what happens when the developers and educators given the responsibility for specifying outcomes, come up with outcomes that do not agree with those held by the elected officials, in our case the government of the time and the NTBOS, themselves. There is little direct evidence for these

disagreements in policy. The curriculum development process is well managed to ensure they do not become apparent. However, historical antecedents in the Northern Territory suggest otherwise and the BOS hovers for ever in the background.

This is related to another tension, that between the degree of prescription and enforcement and the individual autonomy which can be permitted and encouraged. Pogrow (1996) attempts to resolve this tension and draws an analogy with the performing arts. Directive programs he points out are often assumed to rob teachers of their individuality. However, this is not considered true in the performing arts. The problem is that Pogrow assumes the presence of an artistic director which is rarely an explicit requirement for senior executives. Nor does he consider how the work (or project) to be 'performed' is selected.

A fourth tension relates to deep-seated differences in epistemological beliefs. For many developers, knowledge is assumed to be situated and socially constructed whereas managerialists either adopt a positivist approach associated with a right and wrong way of doing something and an approved (or disapproved) way of arriving at knowledge, or disregard the distinction entirely as 'theory'.

These tensions are made more complicated by what we know from previous reform initiatives. In an article on the 'Wannabe reformers' which looks at 'Why Education reforms almost always ending up making things worse,' Pogrow (1996) examines the myths and realities surrounding reform movements. In this section I relate these myths and realities to the Framework case studies.

(1) 'You can reform education by disseminating knowledge' (for example, about the new basics or the inner child) 'and leaving it up to practitioners to apply that knowledge'. In fact, he maintains, 'it makes no sense to expect practitioners to develop their own techniques for implementing a complex reform idea'. (Pogrow, 1996, p658). Echoes of this can be heard throughout the case studies and the NT F/work team demonstrated an awareness of this reality. At the same time, Pogrow does not address the problems of control and dependency or power/knowledge associated with the politics of curriculum.

(2) 'The most important change involves radical reformulation of existing practice, i.e., new paradigms.' Pogrow opposes this with an incrementalist view, pointing out that paradigmatic change rarely occurs. Once again, the writers of the case study strongly embrace the incrementalist view, continually looking to their past experience to make sense of the changes. The problem remains to what degree transformative education and radical social action can be achieved unless new paradigms emerge and Pogrow does not suggest ways in which paradigmatic change occurs.

(3) A belief in the efficacity and achievability of schoolwide, (by which he has in mind both whole school approaches to change), and system-wide change. Pogrow rejects the notion of schoolwide change, which, 'while a nice idea, has never worked on a large scale and is probably not necessary,' (p659) pointing out that the emphasis of the reformers has been on sideshow issues or the correlates of learning, rather than on systematic learning environments themselves. This is another area of major concern to the case study teachers on two counts. Firstly, whilst recognising their centrality and importance in shaping social futures, for them, the EsseNTial Learnings are a 'sideshow issue'. Secondly, from the point of view of whole school or system-wide assessment, the impediments to achieving a school-wide approach are clearly demonstrated in the case studies.

(4) 'You can understand large-scale change by understanding what happens on a very small scale.' Pogrow sees this as 'probably the biggest myth of all,' pointing out that the problem is that 'large-scale change reflects properties that are often diametrically opposed to those in

effect in small-scale research' (p659). The case study authors reveal quite clearly the complex nature of the variables involved. Their work suggests the very real difficulties in trying to achieve a working synthesis, reducible to a set of rules for implementation.

The influence of managerialism and economic rationalism.

A disturbing feature of so much curriculum development is that it is driven by managerialists and entrepreneurs caught up in national responses to globalisation. In fact, the planners are more concerned with commercial futures than they are with social futures. The social futures come along with, emerge from, and are materially affected by consumerism and consumption. Development groups are charged with developing and selling unique packages or ideas, expected to do more with less, and provided with a depleted and reduced budget and a pared down timeline. One can detect these trends in attitudes to intellectual property and the adoption of trademarks and icons. Developers end up pedalling other people's ideas with their own brand name.

The problem is that in spite of the rhetoric of entrepreneurship and the free market, State and Territory governments have a monopoly and in fact are operating in a closed market. Given that education is a state or territory responsibility, this is one of the last refuges where they can maintain that sort of control. State and Territory governments can 'push' their product. Those teachers who don't believe in the product or cannot customise it, are the salespeople who become sidelined or outed. Because they don't meet predetermined efficiency guidelines or 'outcomes', they are accounted for. Those who are conspicuous because of the intensity of their sales pitch are identified and brought into the sales team. Just like the market, there are flavours and models of the month, band-wagons to be jumped on such that curriculum development now resembles more a kareoke performance than the performance of a new work.

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