While disparities between the declared and the enactive curriculum have been widely observed, the significance of what is actually taught has not been investigated. This study proposes that the enactive curriculum is not merely deviant from the declared curriculum; rather, it is part of the curriculum-making process. Teachers necessarily produce the curriculum as an object of study which students encounter in the classroom. This object of study expresses the teacher’s conception of what students need to learn, and is intelligibly related to what they do learn. To explore this idea, the research project focused on the study of physics and history at Year 12, where teachers used a common curriculum and worked to a common external examination. Teachers of these subjects were interviewed about their practice and what they wanted students to learn. A phenomenographic analysis of these interviews showed a systematic relationship between the teacher’s focus and the embedded metaphors s/he used to describe students’ learning. In physics and history, the teachers’ conceptions formed a parallel sequence. What was to be studied was described in a widening context: from a narrow focus on facts or algorithms, to a wider view of a body of knowledge or theory, to a relational view where the physicist or the historian was seen to construct theoretical interpretations or readings of relevant detail. There was corresponding variation in the questions and tasks in which students were engaged.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245467 |
| Creators | Patrick, Katharine Anne |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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