Engage genuinely with the curriculum

Secondary school and tertiary teachers often have a love for a particular subject or area of research that they are passionate about and want to share with others. For Early Childhood and Primary School educators, this may not be the case – although most people will have a favourite, such as Maths or Art.

However, teachers of younger children need to engage with the whole curriculum and not just know its contents. These teachers need to find ways to connect with the curriculum themselves in meaningful ways and be able to transmit the key ideas to their students in interesting and effective ways.

When we teach children, we want them to actively learn, not just passively receive information we may present. If teachers do not engage authentically with the curriculum they deliver, it will be much harder to:

• see possibilities for connecting knowledge and ideas to other parts of the curriculum or previous learning
• predict and prepare for some of the questions students might ask – or even just encourage their questions
• discriminate between essential and peripheral elements of the concepts or information
• know what “comes next”
• generate lots of ideas for ways in which the children could learn what they need to
• evaluate the children’s learning.

You will probably agree that all of the above contribute to effective teaching. Are you able to think of any other limitations that a lack of engagement with the curriculum might cause?

In Australia, most curricula can be derived from the Australian Curriculum.