This week the Universe sent me a curved ball. The IDEAC hosts of the conference I am presenting for in Zhuhai, China in May sent an email. They asked me to change the topic of the keynote from their originally suggested one – on community and connection, the role of traditional stories in drama. Now, they thought it would be of interest to talk about the Australian Drama/Theatre Curriculum. Apart from my heart dropping at the thought of the sunk investment in a keynote written and the slides prepared, the new topic is interesting.

Given that I have spent almost my professional life knocking around in the curriculum writing and policy implementation field and that I have a passionate interest in drama curriculum and teaching it, I am happy to re-focus. But there is also the realisation that the challenge is not simply outlining the published words.

Curriculum is contested territory – everyone it seems has an opinion about what should be taught – and how it should be taught.

The Australian context needs to be sketched in. How do you explain 8 states/territories with primary responsibility for curriculum and teaching balanced against a national curriculum construct? Unlike some places where there is a top down national curriculum approach, the implementation is nuanced and can be variable (never forgetting that what happens in the classroom or school can also be mercurial and idiosyncratic.

Curriculum is coded. Curriculum is written in subject specific jargon (and must be necessarily so or is written in terms that don’t make meaning).

Curriculum is compressed information. When curriculum documents are written, they compress large amounts of information; they make assumptions about the knowledge and experience of the reader (and often overlook the need for specific terminology and concepts in an effort to be “readable”.

The “easiest” approach to this sort of task is to download and dump on the audience the words of the curriculum documents. But years of working with teacher education – preservice and those already teaching – tell me that we need to find ways of translating core curriculum concepts into user friendly language. Usually, this also means finding ways of visualising information to accompany the readers of the curriculum document. Beyond that there is the added challenge of transforming concepts into practical ideas. In other words, the task is to step beyond the curriculum on the page.

All of which is a preamble to thinking through the challenge: how do you explain Australian drama education to an audience who live in a different worldview, have different experiences and yet who are keenly interested in learning.

What would you write about the Australian Curriculum? (And which version?

Bibliography

Vaughan, N., Clampitt, K., & Park, N. (2016). To teach is to learn twice: The power of peer mentoring. eaching & Learning Inquiry, 4(2). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.4.2.7