The Australian Curriculum is published by ACARA: The Australian Curriculum, Assessment
and Reporting Authority.
Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer: ACARA says only a little about Assessment and basically
nothing about Reporting.
The Federal Government just doesn’t have the resources or the money to manage any of
that.
Nevertheless…
Remarkably, the Australian Curriculum is entirely published online.
If you go to AustralianCurriculum.edu.au you’ll find all the Syllabus documents there online.
For me as a teacher, this is really good: the online copy is free and is always up-to-date.
If I want a printed copy to do some planning, the web site makes it possible to produce
topic or year-level summaries or comparison charts, but personally I usually just use
it online.
The Australian Curriculum was born out of the Melbourne Declaration.
A group of political and education stakeholders met together in Melbourne in 2008 and formulated
a general description of what they wanted school education in Australia to look like.
The Melbourne Declaration is very worth reading, because it sets the scene for everything that’s
happening in education today.
It talks—among other things—about students becoming “successful, confident, creative,
active and informed” adults.
Think about those words again, in the context of Mathematics: What does it mean to be—mathematically—“successful,
confident, creative, active, informed”?
The Syllabus documents themselves are shaped by general and subject-specific Shape papers.
The Mathematics shape paper you should definitely read.
Look at the kinds of things it says about Mathematics education.
Mathematics provides opportunities, it enriches students’ lives; it has value, beauty and
elegance; it gives students power to be sophisticated, to respond, to solve, to interrelate.
Our students should become confident, creative users and communicators of Mathematics.
They investigate, represent and interpret the world around them using Mathematics.
They develop sophisticated understanding and fluency; they pose and solve problems, they
reason logically.
They recognise connections—between different ideas in Mathematics, and between Mathematics
and other areas.
And, they “appreciate Mathematics as an accessible and enjoyable discipline to study”!
Think about your own experience of Mathematics education.
What does it mean to be “creative” and “active” in Mathematics?
Notice the creative, active words in that list: respond, solve, communicate, investigate.
What about you: Do you “appreciate Mathematics as an accessible and enjoyable discipline
to study”?
All of the Australian Curriculum documents are built around several general, cross-curriculum
capabilities: Literacy, Numeracy, ICT, Critical and creative thinking, Ethical behaviour,
Personal and social competence, Intercultural understanding.
Obviously in some subjects, different capabilities will be more relevant than others.
In Mathematics, for example, the emphasis is more on the first ones in this list: Literacy,
Numeracy, ICT and Critical and creative thinking.
However the other objectives are still there.
For example, in Mathematics, Ethical behaviour can easily be a part of studies in finance
or statistics.
Look for opportunities to embed all of the general capabilities in every subject area.
Mathematics in particular is further divided up into three Content strands and four Proficiency
strands.
The Content areas are Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and
Probability.
In the old Queensland Syllabus, Statistics and probability was one of five content areas.
In the Australian Curriculum the emphasis on Statistics and probability has been raised
significantly.
This is considered an important area of understanding for people to engage successfully with the
modern media-rich world.
Let’s look in more detail at the Proficiency strands first: Understanding, Fluency, Problem
Solving and Reasoning.
Understanding is about students building a robust knowledge of adaptable and transferable
mathematical concepts.
They make connections between different mathematical and other ideas, and develop new ones.
They understand why and how the mathematics they use works.
Fluency is about students using mathematics flexibly, accurately, efficiently and appropriately.
They need to recall facts and algorithms readily, and use them regularly.
They need to be able to manipulate mathematics to find solutions to problems.
This is the kind of maths that has been traditionally emphasised, and can be easily tested: How
much of the mathematics you’ve just learnt can you recall and apply on a timed closed-book
exam?
Problem solving: Students make informed choices, they interpret the world around them, formulating
mathematical models to investigate, they interpret and communicate their solutions.
They use mathematics to represent, design and plan; they apply; they verify that their
answers make sense and actually solve the problems they face.
Reasoning: Students develop a sophisticated capacity for logical thought.
They analyse, prove, evaluate; they explain, infer, justify, generalise.
Students adapt and transfer their knowledge to new contexts.
They compare and contrast.
Notice once more the active and creative words here, especially outside the more traditional
proficiency of “Fluency”: Making connections, developing new ideas; formulating, investigating,
communicating; analysing, proving, evaluating, generalising, adapting.
How can we teach our students to do these things?
What experiences can we provide for them to develop such skills?
How can we assess how well they can do them?
Because the best answer to the last question may not be with a written exam.
Content-wise, the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics is divided up into three strands, Number and
Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability, and then each of these is
further divided up into sub-strands.
Each sub-strand covers related concepts and ideas across a range of year levels.
Some of the sub-strands develop from one to the next, for example Fractions and decimals
in years 1-6 becomes Real numbers in years 7-10.
For the specific details about what concepts are in what year levels, have a look at the
online document at AustralianCurriculum.edu.au . To give you an idea, here’s the Number
sub-strands at Year 7: Number and place value, Real numbers, and Money and financial mathematics.