E. Developing and implementing the Study Design


Developing and implementing the Study Design

The development and implementation of the first Study Design was the responsibility of the English Field of Study Committee ( FOSC) with Helen Howells as convenor. There were 20 members of the FOSC, of whom 14 were classroom teachers with secondary, technical and ESL backgrounds, and experience in teaching mainstream and alternative senior English courses. Many of the teachers were VATE members. Other FOSC members represented the tertiary sector, including TAFE, parent organisations, industry and business groups, Independent and Catholic sectors, and the Ministry.

Helen’s M.Ed thesis, ‘We Thought We Had the Power’, especially Chapter 7: ‘Seeing the Wood Despite the Trees’, offers a comprehensive and detailed account of the dynamics of the processes of drafting, trialing, consulting, redrafting, etc whereby the finished product was accredited in September 1990.

The structure of the Design reflected the considered consensual deliberation of the English teaching profession about the nature of subject English and how it might best be taught at the senior levels of schooling to a diverse range of students. It proposed four Units of work across Years 11 and 12 with three Areas of Study: the Craft of Writing, the Reading and the Study of Texts, and the Presentation of Issues and Argument. There was a set of work requirements for each unit and the satisfactory completion of these was required to gain a satisfactory credit for the unit, recorded as S (or N for non-satisfactory completion. There were four CATS ( Common Assessment Task) for English in Units 3 and 4. One (Oral communication) was teacher assessed, two (Presentation of an Issue and Writing folio) were teacher assessed and then consensus moderated, and one (Text response) was a two hour exam externally sat and marked (Framing statement G: the question of assessment).

Margaret Gill in ‘Who Framed English? (Framing statement H: The conservative reaction: ‘politicising’ the Study Design) thought it paradoxical that the really radical element in the Study Design was not targeted in the increasingly virulent media campaign against the Study Design. That element was that it required a change in pedagogy and teaching styles for most teachers because of its attempt ‘to promote an explicitly constructivist approach to teaching’ and an ‘overtly participatory model of learning which emphasised both independent initiative and collaborative learning.'

The first English Study Design took four years to develop and was accredited in September 1990. During that period it was trialed in a number of schools and its progress reviewed in a series of four reports by a group of Monash educators led by Professor Jeff Northfield, and published collectively as Lessons for All. This was one of three reports that reviewed the impact of the Study Design during its development and implementation, the others being the McGraw report and the Eyers report, the latter focusing more specifically on issues related to the verification assessment process. All three reports responded favourably to the Design, but saw scope for changes, which were then incorporated, and improvements as the teaching of the Design evolved.

Suggested reading list (items available in VATE office):

  1. Howells, Helen (2002), We thought we had the power: an inquiry into the role of teacher knowledge in the development of the VCE English Study Design 1986-1990, Master of Education thesis, Monash University - especially Chapters 4 and 5
     
  2. McLean Davies/Doecke (with Gill/Hayes), ‘Changing the subject: Text selection and curriculum development in VCE English 1990’ in Required Reading. Literature in Australian Schools since 1945,  (eds. Dolin, Jones, Dowsett), Monash University Publishing, Clayton, 2017: ISBN 9781925 495577
     
  3. VCE English Study Design, VCAB (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board), November 1991: ISBN 0 7306 1242 2
     
  4. Osmotherly, J. and Parr, H. (1990), A Student Guide to the Communication Project, Milton, QLD, The Jacaranda Press,: ISBN 9780701 625702
     
  5. The influence of the thinking behind the Communication Project stretched beyond the VCE. See, for example, ‘Communicating (within your classroom and beyond …)’, in McClenaghan, D., Doecke, B. and Parr, H. (1995), Englishworks 2, Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge Univerisity Press, pp. 134-148: 9780521 459266
     
  6. McGie, Jennifer, ‘A Festival of Communication Projects’, Idiom, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1993
     
  7. Osmotherly, Jan, ‘Media coverage of Gulf kicked up Desert Storm’ in Education Age,  30 April, 1991
     
  8. Creed, B.A. and O’Loughlin, I.L. (eds.) (1991), Insight Year 12: A Complete Guide to VCE English Units 3 & 4, Melbourne: Aird Books: ISBN 0 947214 12 7.

    This gives a good idea of the full extent of the course in Year 12, including all the work requirements and Common Assessment Tasks (CATS).
     
  9. Regarding writing pedagogy when teaching senior students, see ‘A Hardy Perennial: Responding to Students’ Drafts’, in B. Doecke and D. McClenaghan (2011), Confronting Practice: Classroom Investigations into Language and Learning, Putney, NSW: Phoenix Education, pp. 65-70.

    This essay is also available in Responding to Students’ Writing, an Idiom Special published in 1995. This features a whole series of essays by people like Doug McClenaghan, Val Kent, Lynette Smith and Marion Meiers that will gives an insight into how writing pedagogy was variously understood in the years surrounding the development and implementation of the Study Design. Several of these essays were republished in B. Doecke (ed.) (1999), Responding to Students’ Writing: Continuing Conversations, Norwood, SA: Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE), part of the AATE Interface series.
     
  10. Reid, Ian (1984), The Making of Literature. Texts, Contexts and Classroom Practices, AATE (Australian Association for the Teaching of English): ISBN 0 909955 52 2
     
  11. Northfield, J. and Winter, R. (eds.) (1993), Lessons for All, Clayton, APress (imprint of Faculty of Education, Monash University): ISBN 0-7326-0486-9
     
  12. McGaw, Barry, Assessment in the Victorian Certificate of Education: report of a review commissioned by the Victorian Minister for Education and the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board
     
  13. Eyers, Vivian (1992), ‘Verification in the VCE 1991: an Evaluative Commentary’, VCAB (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board)
     
  14. Pannell, Sujatha, ‘Tracking changes in VCE’, The Age, 27 July, 1992
     
  15. Slattery, Luke, ‘VCE quality control lacking’, The Age, 12 March, 1992
     
  16. This issue: VCE, Idiom, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1989. Articles by teachers at two pilot schools, PLC in Burwood and St Leonard’s College, Brighton
     
  17. VCE Report – English, August 1992 (inaugural), VCAB (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board)