Teachers' curriculumn discourses in the implementation of a key learning area syllabus

In contemporary school education in many western countries, the process of implementing centrally formulated curriculum policy into practice is a frequent occurrence. In the context of pursuing economic rationalist objectives for schooling, the curriculum offerings for schools are constantly under review and change, to a point where curriculum making is a regular part of schools', and in particular teachers', daily routines. For example, in recent times in both Australia and the United Kingdom, a significant focus has been on the implementation of national curriculum initiatives. Curriculum policy initiatives are not qunproblematically translated into school practice. Rather they are mediated through a pre-existing institutional infrastructure composed of groups and individuals, inscribed within each schools political cultureq (Mac an Ghail, 1991, p. 311) Such initiatives have, in many instances, been packaged in unfamiliar ways (eg. 'key learning areas' which attempt to bring together knowledge from several traditional subject areas in favour of discipline-based qsubjects') and presented to schools for implementation into structures which have been designed for curriculum packaged into discrete, subjects. Because the reorganisation of school knowledge into multi-subject curriculum packages is a relatively new phenomenon in western school education systems (particularly for secondary or high schools), very little is known about the curriculum making process at a school site. The specific relationships between such initiatives and teachers' curriculum practice remain largely unexplored and historical accounts of their implementation into school sites are currently absent from the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine the curriculum discourses of the teachers who were charged with the task of implementing a multi-subject key learning area curriculum into a subject-based school curriculum structure. Located within the interpretive tradition of educational research, the year-long study was designed to develop a detailed understanding of the curriculum-making discourses at a school site. A case study approach was adopted and qualitative data were collected, substantially from five teachers and one head of a subject department. Two school administrators, a second head of department and two teachers also provided data for the study. Data were analysed to determine the discourses that structured the curriculum-making process. The substantive findings of the study were reported in five papers and a sixth paper provided a reflective look from the participants about aspects of the research process Collectively, the papers highlight the mismatch between what might be regarded as a postmodern curriculum initiative and an embedded structuralist discourse that framed both the curriculum organisation of schools and the curriculum-making practice of teachers and school administrators. Individually, the papers have articulated the anatomy of that mismatch. While the discovery of a mismatch is not altogether surprising, the veracity of the findings raise serious concerns about the efficacy of curriculum-making projects in circumstances where the paradigm of the written curriculum is fundamentally different to the paradigm inherent in the curriculum-making context. By exploring the discourses that uncover the mystery of curriculum-making practice at a school site, the study goes some way to adding to the corpus of curriculum-making knowledge. In doing so the study created a platform for describing curriculum-making, for critiquing the curriculum-making process, and for reconstructing curriculum knowledge generated from the investigation.n