An opinion from retired Associate Professor Steve Kessell, Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University

A Failure of Curriculum Development

The faculties of education in virtually every Australian university teach courses on curriculum development. They would teach their students to include:

A detailed and comprehensive syllabus;

Extensive education support materials;

A clear statement of concepts to be taught by teachers, and concepts / goals / outcomes to be mastered by students;

A comprehensive assessment plan, including assignments, tests and (in year 12) external examination; and

The conduct of a trial of new courses before their widespread implementation.

Western Australia’s proposed Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) courses of studies have none of these features. They have no syllabus, no support materials, nebulous “outcomes” written in edu-babble and “anything goes” assessment. A trainee teacher who developed such a course for her university assignment would flunk.

To this observer (a retired university lecturer), it appears that these courses were developed by a bunch of trendy, politically-correct pseudo-academics, with inadequate knowledge of teaching, learning, assessment and course development. How else could they equate playing the violin to playing a CD in the music course, discuss the cosmetics industry as a TER chemistry assessment, or argue the ethics of air bags for the physics exam. I suspect it is because the courses are being written by self-appointed “professional educators”, who simply don’t know anything about music, chemistry or physics, and who refuse to listen to those who do. This reminds me of the Yes, Minister episode, where the Minister and Sir Humphrey discuss producing a new inert chemical: “It must be good, it wouldn’t “ert” a fly”.