A reorganization of learning in the secondary years

This paper considers the difficulties currently being experienced by secondary education in Tasmania and attempts to provide a methodology for a structural and organizational framework which would allow schools to arrange, evaluate and credential their own curriculum. The development of comprehensive high schools and major effects from them is analyzed through the Reports and Reviews conducted during the last two decades. Major emphases from this literature and other recent Australian and overseas findings form the basis for a more balanced secondary curriculum for students than it seems currently exists under the present structural and organizational practices. Throughout the paper recognition is made of changes in the context for learning and the implications for education, particularly during the adolescent years. Value changes in the whole community are believed to significantly complicate the pattern of adolescent learning. The proposed curriculum of common learning is approached through structural and organizational changes which allow a more extensive justification of the curriculum through rational planning approaches and policies. Changes are suggested in the school pattern to differentiate it less from the two adjoining phases of schooling - primary and senior secondary which seem to reveal higher levels of student satisfaction. A development of the role of the primary school teacher is intended to continue through work in pastoral care which includes emphases on social education and the integration of learning from elsewhere in the school and in the community. The curriculum of common learning is divided into four areas of experience - pastoral care, arts and crafts, communications and the humanities and maths, science and technology. All students give approximately equal time to these areas of experience with a more extensive allocation for pastoral care. The curriculum model suggested is a participative one where special consideration is given to these key features - student and community participation, evaluation and credentialling, staffing and teacher development. Methodologies are identified for the implementation of these focuses in secondary schools. Structures and practices are simplified so as to provide a flexibility to enable a more rapid reponse to needs as they are identified. The model more extensively utilizes community resources to provide a balanced curriculum of student-oriented learning which is arranged in less formal patterns.