Addressing the Challenges of the National Curriculum

Now that the Federal election is over, and despite the uncertainty that a hung parliament presents, the outcome for the National Curriculum will be unchanged as both major parties support its implementation. Nonetheless, the Australian National Curriculum in History still poses a range of challenges and opportunities to teachers, teacher-educators and historians. The History Curriculum calls for a nationwide approach towards the teaching of the past, and it presents a structure for knowledge and skill development that strings together learning outcomes for all year levels from K-12. Of course, one of the key challenges in this new structure, as Tony Joel's recent contribution to APH highlights('Australia's New National Curriculum and the Future of History'), is how we, as historians and teacher-educators, are to help prepare teachers to present this material. Joel argues that there is a 'chronic lack of specialist History teachers' in Australia; and there is a pressing need to 'up-skill' primary and secondary teaching staff to be able to help students learn both the knowledge and skill requirements set by the curriculum. The key crisis for the system, as Joel touches upon, is how teachers are expected to be able to know what to teach and how to teach it. For example, the new curriculum places significant emphasis, throughout K-12, upon the development of historical skills, yet many primary teachers have never received any form of 'history' professional development in their adult lives. The response from the higher education sector to this crisis needs to be swift, but it also needs to be measured; for whilst we are responding to the content of the History Curriculum, we also are addressing the personal professional development needs and wants of teachers.