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The Forum > Article Comments > Top marks to syllabus road maps > Comments

Top marks to syllabus road maps : Comments

By Kevin Donnelly, published 7/10/2005

Kevin Donnelly argues Australia's outcomes-based education approach needs to be replaced by a strong teacher-friendly syllabus.

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Er, Kevin, didn't you WRITE 'the report'? Isn't it a bit misleading not to mention that?
Posted by Laurie, Friday, 7 October 2005 11:24:52 AM
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I’ll put aside for now the matter of comparing educational attainment across different countries and some very difficult questions like what constitutes “essential” learning.

Since the introduction of OBE, amounts of time and resources are used – especially in primary schools – for preparing syllabi and creating or procuring the materials to deliver them to students. The lack of clear, sequential syllabi also makes for a high level of anxiety among teachers as they try to fulfil their responsibility to equip students for their future lives as well as helping them deal with immediate concerns. No wonder the attrition rate in the profession is so high.

However, we must not regress to the old system that bound syllabus rigidly to chronological age. Life experiences, along with physiological, psychological and emotional development, will always vary among students of the same age. It’s part of being human.

Likewise, we must not allow the system to present certain schools or communities as “failures” and others as “elite” simply because they are forced to use the same syllabus despite the circumstances and developmental levels of their clientele.

The issue is far more complex than the either/or question that Kevin Donnelly presents. Of course he may have deliberately simplified the argument to be more polemically effective in his article, and this is understandable, but as educationists we must be more than polemicists.
Posted by Crabby, Friday, 7 October 2005 11:55:20 AM
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I'm with Laurie on this. Kevin has pushing this barrow for so long it would have been amazing if his report came up with any other conclusions.
Posted by rossco, Friday, 7 October 2005 3:28:33 PM
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Thank you Mr Donnelly. I totally agree.
Anyone interested may I refer;
An Examination of the New Visual Arts Syllabus Years 11-12 for NSW,
Alan LEE,
Nat Library
Bar Code 980605724
Ask your childs teacher why opinion is negated, indeed, anauthorised, and how administrators write syllabus, not the people with the knowledge. Carry the government line or lose the job.
Posted by artistB, Friday, 7 October 2005 6:53:04 PM
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Thank you for your article Mr Donnelly

I have taught both curricula approaches and sillabi approaches. And I have taught a combination of both as a university senior lecturer and curriculum designer.

Experience tells me that a syllabi approach until year 10 is the better way to go (teachers can still be creative). I think students in years 11 and 12 should be introduced to a conceptual model in preparation for tertiary studies. But even so, when it comes to final scores, I think that students should be required to reach specific criteria. They should have an equal right to pass, and an equal right to fail.

I taught at university level for some 10 years or so. Much of my time was needlessly spent in teaching Australian born students who did not know how to use correct grammar or how to spell. I was supposed to be teaching mental health nursing.

I did not have the same problem with the many Hong Kong students who were in my classes. They thrived on the Barrows and Tamplyn model of Problem-based Learning (PBL). They were a joy to teach. They could read fluently, write quite well given that English was their second language, and they worked their buts off. My only complaint about these students was that they worked too hard - often telephoning me until midnight.

For goodness sake. Students have a right to pass, and they have an equal right to fail.

Failure can be a strong motivator. People do not die as a result of failure. Failure can be a great teacher. Some of my most outstanding students became outstanding because they had failed!

Cheers
Kay
Posted by kalweb, Friday, 7 October 2005 8:31:16 PM
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Dr Donnelly,

You have made your point. Over and over and over again. It will be ignored like all your other efforts because they are all based on assumptions and generalisations. You are a dinosaur. Thank heavens no-one listens to you.
Posted by Chris Devir, Saturday, 8 October 2005 2:03:52 PM
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And just for the record Kevin Donnelly is a former teacher who was for 10 years Director of Education Strategies who now works for Kevin Andrews, the Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations.
Posted by Rainier, Saturday, 8 October 2005 6:27:08 PM
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Let me summarise the criticism's.
Kevin Donnelly is bias AND wrong.
The end.

At least Kevin has an argument.

All his critics seem to have is innuendo and insults.

New 'theories' of teaching may be consider by some to be 'progressive' and returning to old methods 'regressive' but if you are on the wrong path, the most progressive person is the one who back-tracks until they get back on the right path.

If outcomes based learning underperforms compared to a syllabus approach (An evidential claim) then we should prefer the more effective approach. It's as simple as that.

Kevin's findings are not suprising as human's have been teaching their young for thousands of years and there is certainly scope to thikn that maybe the old guys had some wisdom is handing down how to teach.
Posted by Grey, Monday, 10 October 2005 9:36:02 AM
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Hi,

Just to correct some mistakes. I left Kevin Andrews' office about 12 months ago and re-started Education Strategies. Three other academics were involved in the benchmarking report, specialists in maths, science and early years of reading. Much of the analysis is their work and not mine. Many of those critical of the report, have either never read the full report(s), there are two parts to the report, or are simply happy to attack one of the messengers.
Posted by Kevin D, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:10:37 AM
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Kevin often uses the US as a bench mark to what we should be doing here in Oz. The stupidity of this is amazing seeing that they are themselves complaining about the very same things that Kevin is going on about. http://www.math.umd.edu/~dac/650/vernillepaper.html a google will bring you lots of examples.

So it is clear that their system is "failing" them to. Try coming up with some new ideas Kevin rather then the good enough for me mantra.
Posted by Kenny, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:32:34 AM
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Hi Kenny,

Try and actually read the benchmarking report. I clearly state that the USA adopted OBE, as we did in Australia, during the 90s and that this led to arguments in the US about dumbing down the curriculum and falling standards. More recently, the US dropped OBE in favour of a more academically rigorous standards approach, unlike Australia, where we have continued down the OBE path. In the states, OBE is a dirty word and now the focus is on standards. I'd be happy if we adopted a standards approach as well.
Posted by Kevin D, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 1:33:00 PM
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Kevin has confused several issues here. Outcomes-based education (OBE for short) is designed precisely so that teachers, students and parents are absolutely clear about what it is that children are to learn and how well they have learned it. The implementation of OBE may well have become clouded by the sloppy use of language in describing those outcomes, but that is a different issue entirely. Nor has outcomes based education anything to do with teaching “integrated” curricula as opposed to the basic disciplines—again, that is a separate question. OBE can be used whatever the syllabus.
In OBE, the outcome that we want students to learn is stated so that we can tell if that outcome has been achieved and how well. Traditional curricula simply provide a list of topics the teacher is to “cover”, not the standard at which the students are to learn them. The idea of OBE is so simple. How can you tell if a student has understood a topic in physics? You set a task that cannot be solved at less than the desired standard. There is a built-in quality assurance that doesn’t exist in Kevin's traditional model. Outcomes-based education puts the emphasis not on what the teacher does, but on what the students are to learn.
I have been involved in designing and implementing a version of OBE in the tertiary sector called “constructive alignment”. Here, the assessment is not only aligned to the outcomes, as in basic OBE, but also the teaching/learning activities needed if students are to achieve those outcomes. Constructive alignment has been very successfully implemented in individual departments in Australian universities, while in the UK and in Hong Kong, it has become the overall framework for quality assurance (for further information Google “constructive alignment” and choose from the 14,300 references).
Posted by John Biggs, Tuesday, 18 October 2005 3:29:46 PM
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OBE can still include boring learning techniques such as Rote learning and memorisation, you like these methods and that is why you have achieved well. However there are students that simply can not learn through these processes, if you think back a very long time you may even be able to remember them.
OBE gives teachers more flexibility to teach different methods and includes theories such as Gardner's multiple intellegnces and the learning styles.
I know that these concepts are relatively new and expect teachers to cater for a wider diversity of students, but shouldn't we always be looking at ways to improve the field that we work in, instead of sticking to antiquated methods?
Every students deserves a fair go, don't they?
Students that over achieve can still get the regonition they deserve and the support to advance in their learning. I believe that if you are a good teacher, you would want all you students to achieve to the best of their abilities.
Posted by battler, Wednesday, 9 November 2005 3:36:12 PM
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