Pre-service Teacher's Name: Clare Redshaw Reflective Journal Entry: 2 Topic: Australian Curriculum and VELS as a Curriculum Framework.

Leading Questions: What do I know/understand about... Both the Australian Curriculum and the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) focus on an education curriculum over all subject areas from Prep (Foundation Year) through to Year 10. The difference between the two is in the titles. The VELS is a curriculum for schools in Victoria to follow, whereas the Australian Curriculum is a nationwide curriculum for all schools to use across all states and territories of Australia.

While the VELS is being phased out in schools, the framework is and still will be partially in use until 2014, while the Australian Curriculum is in its final stages of development. Over the years the VELS or previous state wide curriculums have served us well within our own schools. However, when students or teachers move interstate the confusion beings. Ages and year levels do not correspond over each state and territory, and most importantly neither do the curriculums. For example, in New South Wales, students in Prep are require to be able to write number words up to twenty, whereas in Victoria they are only required to write number words up to ten. These discrepancies may only seem minor, but you put a large number of 'minor' discrepancies together and you have one big discrepancy, leaving children behind or in front when moving between states for education.

A curriculum is like a road map for learning, it focuses on the knowledge and skills that are judged important for students to learn (Weir, 2012). A curriculum outlines the content required for students learning, student activities, teaching approaches and standards to be achieved. The aim of a curriculum is to ensure equality in education across all year levels, subjects and schools. The Australian Curriculum will ensure that this equality is spread nationwide.

What have I observed and experienced... During my time on placement from March 2012 - June 2012 as part of the Prep team, I was lucky enough to attend a number of planning meetings and be involved in not just classroom planning but also year level planning. At the first meeting I attended, leading into term 2, I was introduced to the AusVELS. This was the first time I had heard of the AusVELS and wondered why we were not using VELS. As the meeting progressed I began to realised that I was not the only one in the meeting who was confused about the curriculum. As part of our teaching team, we also had a teacher, who in the past taught in New South Wales. This brought about even more confusion as her idea of curriculum requirements were different to those of us only used to the VELS. Trying to interpret the AusVELS and the VELS, as well as the odd mention of the Australian Curriculum, and work out what we were supposed to be using proved to be tricky task.

Towards the end of Term 2 I attended the Term 3 planning meeting, where I now learnt that the AusVELS were causing even more confusion, and the Australian Education Union had virtually put a ban on the use of them for teachers. Therefore this meant, that if any coordinators or principals raised any ideas around AusVELS that teachers could boycott the meeting if they were a part of the union. Because of this ban and the development of the Australian Curriculum, we based all Term 3 planning around the Australian Curriculum. It appeared that VELS had been scrapped and was no longer relevant, AusVELS was taboo and the Australian Curriculum was in.

I am only know learning about the processes to change the curriculum and why they have come about, although have always understood that the plan is to have a nationwide curriculum to level out learning standards and teaching requirements across the country. References: Australian Curriculum Assessment and Report Authority. (2012). Australian Curriculum. Retrieved from: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2012). Victorian Essential Learning Standards. Retrieved from: http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/
Weir, L. (2012). Lecture Week 3 Slides: Curriculum. EDFD220: Teaching and Managing Learning Environments. Retrieved from: http://leo.acu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=6025#