The Australian Curriculum – Unpacking achievement standards and levels of performance
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Australian Curriculum
Design of the Australian Curriculum
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Three-Dimensional
Preparing students to live and work successfully in the 21st century
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General capabilities comprise an integrated and interconnected set of knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that students develop and use in their learning across the curriculum, in co-curricular programs and in their lives outside school.
General capabilities
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Cross Curriculum Priorities
Tailored specially for Australian students and designed to locate students temporally and spatially in the world they live in.
• a deep and understanding of Australia’s past and the strong connection Australia’s first peoples have to country, place, sky and water ways
• An appreciation of where Australia is located in the world and our extensive engagement with Asia in social, cultural, political and economic spheres
• An understanding of how they can shape the future
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Learning areas
Learning areas Subjects Expected to be taught
English F-10*
Mathematics F-10*
Science F-10*
Humanities and Social Sciences
F-6/7 HaSSYears 7-10 HistoryYears 7-10 GeographyYears 7-10 Civics and CitizenshipYears 7-10 Economics and Business
F-6F-10*F-8F-8F-8
The Arts Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music, Visual Arts F-62 Art forms in 7-8
Technologies Design and TechnologiesDigital Technologies
F-8F-8
HPE F-10*
Languages 18 Languages and Frameworks 3-8
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Australian Curriculum
Unpacking the Australian Curriculum
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Unpacking the Australian Curriculum
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Aspects of the Australian Curriculum
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Essential aspects of the Curriculum
There are two essential aspects of the Australian Curriculum:
• What students will be taught – Content descriptions
• What students will learn – Achievement standards
• The curriculum is written FOR educators to develop programs for TEACHING (content descriptions) and LEARNING (achievement standards)
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Current practice and criticism
The structure of the curriculum lends itself to a ‘checklist’ mentality (Ditchburn, 2012, p. 353) whereby teachers feel obliged to ‘tick off’ the content requirements for their year level.
Recently reported in Education Today, Vol 17 (2) Term 2, 2017
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The ‘checklist mentality’
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Begin with expected achievement
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Achievement standards structure
Unpacking the structure of achievement standards
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What are achievement standards?
Statement of expected learning
Describe the depth of conceptual understanding and the sophistication of skills expected of students
Describe a broad sequence of learning from F-10
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Achievement standards structure
There are two exceptions:• English • Languages
Typically, two paragraphs of prose Second paragraph is
skills – what students are expected to be able to do
First paragraph is understanding –what students are expected to understand
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The structure within a standard
Typically, for each learning area, each paragraph is organised by the strands and sub-strands.
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Secondary example
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Exceptions – Concepts
When there are no sub-strands, the achievement standards are organised by concepts (History and Geography) or organising ideas (Civics and Citizenship and Economics and Business)
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Exceptions – Organising ideas
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Your turn
Activity 11. Select a learning area and year level from the
selection on the tables.
2. For each statement in the achievement standard, highlight the corresponding sub-strand or concept you think it relates to. There may be more than one sub-strand represented in each sentence. If so, highlight both sub-strands in the box.
3. If you have time, discuss any patterns or relationships you identified.
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Achievement standards
Unpacking achievement standards at sentence level
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Unpacking achievement standards at sentence level
EVERY sentence has:
• A verb that indicates the cognitive process that is to be deployed (cognitive process)
• The object of action (content)
By the end of Year 4, students recognise strategies for managing change.
MOST sentences include:
• A modifier to describe complexity, quality, depth or conditions.
By the end of Year 3, students identify different views on how to respond to an issue or challenge.
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Examples
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Further examples
These three elements are not always presented in the same order as shown in the following examples:
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Your turn
Activity 21. Select a learning area and year level worksheet
on your table
2. Highlight the elements of the standard• Green (process)
• Blue (modifier)
• Pink (content)
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Standards-based
• Unpacking the ‘standard’
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What is standards-based?
Outcomes-based education Standards-based
Systems of instruction, assessment, reporting based on
Goals (outcomes). By the end of
the educational experience, each student
should have achieved the goal.
• Identifies celebrations and
commemorations of significance in
Australia and the world
• Applies skills of communication
(NSW History Syllabus, Stage 2)
Describe the what and not how well
Students demonstrating understanding and
skills they are expected to learn as they
progress through their education.
• By the end of Year 3, students
identify individuals, events and
aspects of the past that
have significance in the present.
• Students communicate their ideas,
findings and conclusions in oral,
visual and written forms using
simple discipline-specific terms.
Describe ‘the depth’ of understanding
Describe the ‘sophistication’ of skills
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EVERY sentence describes:
1. The cognitive process/es or observable action/s (verb)
2. The object of action (content)
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Other aspects
Many sentences also describe:
• Expectations of quality
• Complexity
• Breadth
• Depth
• Conditions
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Descriptions of quality
Cognitive process (typically adverbs)
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Descriptions of quality
Content (typically adjectives)
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Descriptions of complexity
Process
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Descriptions of complexity
Content
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Descriptions of breadth and depth
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Describing conditions
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Let’s recap
• Achievement standards describe what students are expected to understand and do – the non-negotiables
Students:
• read texts
• communicate ideas
• design solutions
• group objects
• present findings
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They can also describe ‘the standard’
• level of quality expected in terms of the cognitive process and the content that the process is deployed on
• level of complexity in relation to the cognitive process and content
• the breadth and depth of learning students are expected to demonstrate
• conditions in which students demonstrate their learning
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Your turn
Activity 3• Match the phrases from the Australian Curriculum
achievement standards to one of the following modifiers:
• quality of process
• quality of content
• complexity of process
• complexity of content
• depth and breadth of learning
• conditions of learning
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Levels of performance
Developing levels of performance
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Levels of performance
The achievement standard is a standard which has
up to 5 levels of achievement that students can
demonstrate.
The work of students that is above or below
satisfactory MUST be described within the
achievement standard for that year level or band
(unless the student is operating at a lower year level
achievement standard, or being accelerated ie has
an ILP).
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Equity of access
• ALL students are entitled to achieve the standards (understanding and skills) as described in the curriculum.
Therefore:
• A D-grade or an E-grade does not mean the expectations of learning are fundamentally different, rather that can be qualitatively different, or the expectation of understanding and skills are the same, but to a lesser level of quality, or have been achieved with support.
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Entitlement
Students:
• read texts
• communicate ideas
• design solutions
• group objects
• present findings
ALL levels of performance should include at the very least the non-negotiables – Every student’s entitlement.
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Cognitive
process
Object (Content) Modifier
(Qualities,
levelness)
Object (Content) Cognitive
process
Object (Content) Modifier
(Qualities
levelness)
ABOVE describe how people, places, communities and environments are diverse and
locally and globally
interconnected and
identify the causes and effects of these interconnections
over time
AT describe how people, places, communities, and environments are diverse and
globally interconnected and
identify the effects of these interconnections
over time
BELOW identify how environments are diverse and
interconnected
Example of poor description of LOA
Providing more content to keep high performing students ‘busy’
A low level of achievement is not less content
Altering the intention of the standard, or setting an ‘easier’ standard is not ensuring equity of access
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A way forward
Ok, so how do we discriminate between levels of performance or achievement?
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Complexity of process
A
Evaluate
B
Analyse
C
Recognise and explain
Level ‘C’ reflects what every student must be able to understand and do
Increase the challenge level for A and B
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Other ways to discriminate
• The quality of the process or content
• The contexts in which the process is deployed – eg the range of contexts (number, frequency)
• The type or complexity of content the action is applied to
• Conditions under which the student performs
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Begin with the ‘C’
In the following example, the cognitive process and the object have been qualified to describe the level of performance.
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Using modifiers to discriminate
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A secondary example
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Your turn
• Select a primary or secondary worksheet
• Using this standard as a benchmark for ‘C’, draft an A. B. D and E level of performance. (use the example as a guide).
• When drafting these levels of performance, ensure that each level is qualitatively different from the level above and below
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Possible response - Primary
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Possible response - Secondary
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The process revisited1. Begin with the achievement standard statement (pitched at a
‘C)
2. Determine the observable action (verb) and whether the demand can be changed for A and B levels of performance
3. Determine how the achievement expectations might change for A, B, D and E in relation to the ‘negotiables’, ie quality, complexity, depth and breadth and conditions
4. Combine these elements to write each level of performance
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Now you have:
• clarified the important elements of the Australian Curriculum and reaffirmed the centrality of achievement standards
• debunked the myth (currently in the media) that teachers are treating the curriculum as a ‘checklist’ of what is to be taught’
• unpacked achievement standards in relation to their structure at a paragraph and sentence level
• tools for discriminating between levels of performance
• WHAT NEXT?
SO WHAT NOW?
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Key message – begin with the end in mind
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Imagine …
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and not …
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A program of professional learning
Workshop
2Workshop 3
Building understanding
Unpacking achievement
standards and levels of
performance
Catering to all students
The Australian Curriculum and
differentiationLiteracy and numeracy
Using the National Literacy
and Numeracy Progressions to
differentiate
Planning for success
Standards based planning and
assessment
Workshop 1
Program of
professional
learning
Workshop 5
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Posters are available at:
• www.australiancurriculumresources.com
• #acrforteachers
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