Text Box: Thinking back to the last system-wide curriculum change, I remember being frustrated by the CSF when I first saw it in 1996. We had to spend a curriculum day auditing courses against dry lists of content; surely there had to be a better way to think of what teaching and learning involves. I ended up in a school, however, where we didn’t have to tick off CSF indicators or outcome statements. As a consequence I’ve never marked a student as Beginning, Consolidated, or Established and have never wrestled with the famous 747 outcome statements. In Text Box: spite of this, the VCE study designs still drove us to cover pretty much the same content at P-10, while the CSF just sat in the background, occasionally referred to for a general idea of the recommended material at that level. I’ve been to a few VELS briefings and its evident that this is also how VELS treats the CSF, i.e. a background document for further reference. VELS doesn’t try to exhaustively spell out all the content; it describes the Essential Learning Text Box: within the disciplines in broad paragraphs (ie the Standards). It does, however, go further in some other areas and acknowledges what teachers always knew - learning is not just about content. The interwoven Strands give us a curriculum which also addresses how we learn and teach; in social contexts, by negotiating personal goals, relating with others in teams, employing a range of thinking processes, using technology, and as part of a connected world. These are key skills of learning and also what many employers are Text Box: Volume 1, Issue 1 Text Box: SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT Text Box: September 2005 Text Box: What is the “thinking curriculum”? If CSF style curriculum was primarily about content to be covered, the “thinking oriented curriculum” refers to the processes involved in learning i.e. how do we teach so students use a range and scope of thinking skills? VELS embeds this in the “interdisciplinary thinking domain”.

What is I & E doing?

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 Future issues

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Innovation and Excellence : Update
Text Box: Why? Text Box: looking for. The intention is to give schools and teachers more freedom in constructing courses. I asked one of the VELS team at Text Box: VCAA if this really is the idea; that VELS is a more a philosophy which schools use to construct a curriculum, rather than a prescription of what Text Box: to cover? They agreed this was the general thinking. More info at http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/