Victorian Curriculum Report: Teacher Standards, Diversity, Assessment

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Victorian Curriculum F-10, examining its introduction, rationale, aims, and scope. It delves into the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, analyzing their significance and application through observations of classroom videos, focusing ...Read More

VICTORIAN CURRICULUM
April
17
2018

Table of Contents
Victorian Curriculum.......................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Part 1: Victorian Curriculum...........................................................................................................2
1.1: Introduction of the Victorian Curriculum.............................................................................2
1.2 Summary of rationale and aims.............................................................................................3
Rationale......................................................................................................................................3
Aims.............................................................................................................................................3
Scope and Sequence.....................................................................................................................4
Strands..........................................................................................................................................4
Part 2: Australian Professional Standards for Teachers..................................................................4
2.1 Introduction of the Australian professional standards for teachers........................................4
1st Video.......................................................................................................................................5
2nd Video.......................................................................................................................................5
2.2 Significance of these standards..............................................................................................6
Part 3: Cultural and Ethnic diversity...............................................................................................6
Part 4: Formative and summative assessment.................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
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References........................................................................................................................................9
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Victorian Curriculum F-10
Introduction
The Victorian Curriculum F-10 does portray a set of complete logical content description along
with achievement standards. The core purpose behind this curriculum is to enable the teachers
with the ability to plan, supervise, evaluate and then finally report over the academic progress of
every student. As far as the fundamental outline is concerned, there is a major similarity among
the “Australian Curriculum F-10” and the “Victorian Curriculum F-10”;however, the Vic
Curriculum does differ in certain respects. The most important element is, “the curriculum has
been represented as the range of structural and learning design”, which is planned for ensuring
continuous growth with effective monitoring of the learners.
Part 1: Victorian Curriculum
1.1: Introduction of the Victorian Curriculum
To prepare the Australian future generations with solid foundation, the Victorian government
came up with the idea to introduce a new Curriculum, during late 2015 (September) (Bailey
2014). This isn’t the first time the state is being responsive to the educational requirements of the
future generation. The state officials have always been enthusiastic towards making innovation
to the state curriculum (Ambrosetti 2014). The summary underneath makes a clear projection of
the commitment that the state showed towards continuous reformation to enhance the learning
experience for the learners/students.
The video link for the Victorian Curriculum is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZARZjPsilI
There are eight different learning areas of Victorian curriculum that are mentioned underneath:
Learning Areas Disciplines
Arts  Dance,
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 Drama,
 Media Arts,
 Music,
 Visual Arts,
 Visual Communication Design
English
Health and Physical
Education
The Humanities  Civics and Citizenship,
 Economics and Business,
 Geography
 History
Languages
Mathematics
Science
Technologies  Design and Technologies
 Digital Technologies
1.2 Summary of rationale and aims
Rationale
Science does have a unique way for providing solution to every possible query that learners can
come up with regarding technological, physical and biological world (Savery 2015). The world
has witnessed and is still witnessing some major scientific inventions that helped the mankind to
refine its knowledge (Jasanoff 2015). Students being at the doorstep to explore the unexplored or
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gain knowledge about various aspects of interest or facets of knowledge can utilize science to
design definitions with new perspective.Students will be introduced to the different levels and
achievement standards to help the teachers understand the degree of effort students must give.
For example: “Foundation to Level 2”- The emphasis would entirely be upon self-awareness
along with the local world. Students would be introduced to different changes irrespective of the
size; they would explore different properties of such changes and be familiar with it.
Aims
The aim of the curriculum is to equip students with:
Knowledge to explore every corner of their curiosity about things they aren’t familiar with. They
would be able to ask questions and provide answer as well. Once familiar with the scientific
knowledge and understanding, students would be able to build their own perspective about things
they haven’t come across so far. They would as well be able to discover facts and information
about different facets of nature, the entire globe, its position and many more.
Scope and Sequence
The scope and sequence are a form of chart that has been designed to assist the teachers with
their professional obligation of being aware about student progress. Teachers are expected to
follow the scope and sequence to design and develop the teaching and learning programs, which
would ultimately help in meeting the diverse requirements of students.
Strands
Strands include- rationale and aims, structure, learning in science, scope and sequence, resources
and glossary. While going through the curriculum, the strand would help the students to
familiarize with the content they can view simultaneously (Foster 2018).
Part 2: Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
2.1 Introduction of the Australian professional standards for teachers
The Australian professional standards for teachers as defined by the “AITSL” involve seven
fundamental standards, which outline the professionalobligation for the teachers along with their
fundamental duty (Clarke and Moore 2013). All these seven standards are interdependent,
overlapping and interconnected with one another (Mockler 2012). The professional standards
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have been sorted into three different domains of coaching including- “Professional knowledge”,
“Professional practice” and “Professional engagement”.
As far as the videos are concerned, the below section would incorporate a discussion over two
different videos. The teachers and their teaching style would be discussed of these videos:
1st Video
In the first video, the teacher Annalise McCoy is very profound in terms of connecting with each
one of the students in her classroom. I liked the manner she prefers selecting the visual language
for communicating with the students. I think it helps her in maintaining the classroom with
communicating with students even if there is a disability factor among some of the students. I
also found that she emphasizes over using pictorial signs to convey or communicate with her
students. She also believes in using the ICT (information and communication technology), to
expand learning opportunities for the students. She also uses “Interactive Black Board” that is
often helpful for engaging with students that are interested in using such technologies. With the
same, in the video, there are some students that do not find the “interactive black board” to be
interesting enough or hard to understand, and therefore, they are learning using models or stories.
Miss Annalise is also effectively paying individual attention to every student. There is a girl
child who struggles academically; therefore Annalise understands the need to pay extra attention
to this girl child. According to Schleicher (2012), the most preferable way for teaching such
children is by learning their abilities to catch content being thrown away at them and then
planning about teaching strategies. It is important to establish a connection with the students to
make them confident for engaging in learning process. In the video, the major emphasis is over
combining physical activities along with learning to create the ideal environment for the students
to learn (Simoncini et.al, 2014).
I also realized that Miss McCoy prefers using visuals instead verbal language and this is really
good. As stated by Geurin-Eagleman and Burch (2016), Visuals or pictorial presentations are
helpful to communicate in a better manner.
2nd Video
In the second video, the teacher “Rebecca Cramp” is accountable for teaching juniors. I like the
manner she emphasizes over paying individual attention to every student with learning
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problem/disability. Rebecca also mentioned that it is necessary for the children to be allowed
with substantial time to understand the content/question they have been asked with. The teaching
process in this scenario has also been over visuals; students are being given with English
alphabets that are big enough to read clearly. As it is said by Van and Berry (2012), the use of
interactive board has also been emphasized in this video, which is a better way for connecting
and helping students. Students are also provided with the iPads so that they can learn about
technology and curriculum studies.
Like Miss McCoy, Miss Cramp has also been emphasizing over using visuals than being verbal
for communicating anything. Also, there are students that have short memory conditions;
Rebecca involves with these students frequently helping them remember things for a longer
period.
However, I think if Cramp also focuses in reducing the amount of the routine information that
the child suffering from short memory problem must remember, it could help them. She can also
provide the class with checklist for the steps that they are required to complete.
2.2 Significance of these standards
The “Australian professional standards for teachers” have been approved and acknowledged by
the “New South Wales” Ministry of Education during mid-2012. The application or
implementation of these standards began under “Ministerial Council for Education, Early
Childhood Development and Youth Affairs” during 2009. One of the major professional
obligations of teachers is to be familiar with the manner students tend to capture whatever is
being taught (Santoro et.al, 2012). It also is the quality of a great teacher to be aware about every
student individually.
Feedback is of paramount importance; students and their parents have to be aware about the
child’s growth, providing feedback is the best solution for this (Schleicher, 2012). Similarly,
being professional with colleagues, parents and community would certainly be as much effective
for the teacher to extract best possible result.
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Part 3: Cultural and Ethnic diversity
In the week 5 video 3 video that includes “Jamie Humphrey” the foundation teacher that is
accountable for teaching students that belong to culturally diverse backgrounds. Jamie tries to
connect with every student in her class with visuals in order to keep any probable confusion. She
has also been respectful to the diverse cultural backgrounds; every Wednesday Jamie conducts
story telling from different cultural background. Recently the class was told about a story from
Afghani cultural story. They have also been effective in terms of portraying stories about
indigenous stories in the class; the basic idea is to make the children aware of different cultural
backgrounds and making them tolerant about the need of different students from different
cultural background. Jamie also emphasize over teaching with verbal and non-verbal way to
communicate with the children. For example: there is a “get-ready song” and a “pack-up song”,
which allows students to prepare their mindset with the manner they are supposed to respond.
Jamie has been enthusiastic towards helping children learn about the cultural diversity. Every
Wednesday Jamie engages with the children with a story belonging to different cultural
background. One of the latest stories that Jamie mentioned was about Afghani culture and
religion. Jamie has also been engaged with the parents to help their child learn their cultural
language and customs.
Example: This has led the student respect each other cultural diversity. Students playfully take
part in the activities together though belonging from different background and they
collaboratively do each and every task in the class room.
Part 4: Formative and summative assessment
Teachers often engage in the process of assessing the growth of their students, which might
either be summative or formative. Both of these terms have different meaning,
Formative assessment: Formative Assessment can be defined as a tool that can be used for
continuous assessment of the students. Teachers engage in formative assessment in order to
evaluate “how effective the students have been throughout an entire year. Assessing students at
the end of the curriculum or course can draw extra effort; teachers might have to pay extra
attention at the end period (Van Driel& Berry, 2012). Assessing students during their learning
period would help the teacher to gather the information about students and particular points at
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the lesson that need immediate consideration.Teachers are expected to engage with the students
on a more personal level in order to assess if they are being effective with learning process. The
process of “formative assessment” is the best possible way to elevate the student’s knowledge
and skills (Tomlinson, 2014).
Example: Miss McCoy has been engaged with Jordan, a child that is partially disabled and
experiencing autism (less concentration, isolation, less social). She has been engaged with Jordan
continuously to help him remember things and objects that he just learnt about. Miss McCoy
comes along with Jordan multiple times and ask him questions about the lesson. This clearly is
the formative assessment technique, where Jordan clearly showed improvement.
Summative assessment: Unlike the formative assessment, this term deals with student
assessment at the end of the curriculum to check on the preparation. The students are checked on
their learning, the skills they have acquired during the course, their academic achievements by
the semester or the school year end (Vivian et.al, 2014). It isn’t possible for every student to be
brilliant; summative assessment for this type of students isn’t a better idea (Lederman et.al,
2014).
Example: The video titled “Diverse Abilities, Foundation Primary School” clearly makes a
projection of how Miss Jamie has been involved with her students in order to help them learn.
Miss Jamie prefers teaching completely and then assessing the students if they have been
effective in learning.
Conclusion
The Victorian government has always been enthusiastic towards making continuous innovation
to the curriculum, in order to enhance the quality of education for the learners. The study above
has been focused over the Victorian Curriculum that has been introduced during late 2015. The
core purpose behind the introduction of the curriculum was to enable the teachers to ensure
students and learners are kept under continuous monitoring in order to ensure their effective
learning.
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References
AITSL 2011, Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, retrieved 3 March 2018 (or your
date of retrieval) , <http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/
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Ambrosetti, A. (2014). Are you ready to be a mentor? Preparing teachers for mentoring pre-
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