RSS Feed

Posts Tagged ‘syllabus’

  1. The Unmeasured

    6 February 2015 by shartley

    As HSC scores and ATAR results roll into the school’s conversations and the media coverage, we find ourselves evaluated and judged on the basis of these.  The media only has access to the Band 6 (90 and above) results of students in each subject so schools are ranked on this basis.  In this post I want to discuss the unmeasured outcomes.

    In Year 12 Society and Culture today I was meant to be covering the dot-point in the syllabus about the future directions of the country we had chosen to study for the topic of Change and Continuity.  We have been studying Vietnam.  In class, students were organised into small groups and were supposed to use all that they had learned about Vietnam to predict what would happen in the next 5 to 10 years.  They had spent several weeks studying Vietnam at the end of last year and had a refresher lesson and a half this week.

    However, they struggled to focus, which could partly be because it was Friday, at the end of the first full week back, on a day of an assembly that went for over an hour and that they are keen to move onto the next topic, Popular Culture.  Every bit of pleading and guiding failed.  So I let it go.  I decided to give myself a break for 10 minutes and leave them to discuss whatever they wanted to discuss.  The group that most interested me included a girl who suffers from anxiety and the most chilled girl going around.  They run in completely different social circles but they were using this time to find out about each other and their attitudes towards school.  It was fascinating to eavesdrop on the conversation as Miss Chilled gave Miss Stressed advice and Miss Chilled learned how much other students care about results and doing their best to perform at school.  Miss Chilled expressed how much she loves school because she lets all the hard bits just wash by her.  Miss Stressed couldn’t believe that people like Miss Chilled exist in the world.  What I was most fascinated by was how much they listened to each other intently and learned about different perspectives and attitudes towards the purpose of school.  And isn’t that what Society and Culture is all about?  Yet this conversation will never be measured or recorded except in this blog and possibly in their own memories.

    All up, the three groups came up with some good basic fundamental future directions for Vietnam but mere bones which need a lot more flesh.  I’m frustrated that I feel the need to do one more lesson to expand their ideas when my schedule says we should be starting Popular Culture.  How often do we ignore learning opportunities because of our plans based on content driven syllabuses?  Thankfully in Society and Culture we have more scope and space than most other subjects except for the timing requirements of the Personal Interest Project (PIP) but I’ll save discussion of the PIP to another day.

    The assembly today was a celebration of the 2014 HSC students who achieved an ATAR of 90 or more.  It was a well ran event with one of those students performing a piece out of the musical Chess, a guest speaker, the Head of Curriculum speaking and two of the 2014 HSC students speaking, ending with the student who achieved the top ATAR mark for the grade.  Both the students spoke about balance and tried to provide advice for how to approach the HSC, study and school life in general.  They had both very thoughtfully constructed speeches directed at their peers.  The seeds they may have sowed today will never be measured because the cause and effect of HSC results to speeches like these are not measured.  My daughter is in Year 12 this year and a similar event occurred at her school and the highlight for her was similar advice from a past student but her outward behaviour will not change in any detectable way. I’m a big believer in sowing seeds that may blossom immediately or may take an age to show life.

    Today I had 10 minutes with a colleague who is resistant to change and having to learn new things but she is thrown into a circumstance where she must.  I showed her how to use the technology required for our Year 7 program and provided some tips along the way to make it easier and more efficient.  All these little moments of teachers learning are not measured; it seems that only the big registered courses that count in the teacher accreditation process.  The 10 minutes snatched here and there are precious in the teaching world but are not valued enough.  Teachers learning from each other, planning together and even teaching together is vital for the modern age but there isn’t enough of it.

    Ah, my 28 minutes are up.  I’ll sneak in here at the end stuff about my last class of the week with Year 7, my second ever Geography class with them, with both lessons having a focus on the technology set-up rather than the subject itself, and that’s fine.  While they were learning about the technology and some basics of high school Geography, I learned about them.  I learned how a boy interrupts me mid-sentence every time he had something to say (and I wonder if he is allowed to interrupt his parents at home), how another could not stop talking no matter how hard he tried, how some boys have patience and resist the hardships being dependent on technology can bring, while others want to give up at the first sign of difficulty.  I learned how strongly independent some students were, and they weren’t who I expected.  I learned that most of the students started the year with a concept that Geography is all about nature and that the human element is a perspective of Geography many hadn’t considered before.  I don’t know all the students’ names yet so I don’t have comprehensive notes of all this but this information is invaluable for deciding my attitude and approach to teaching them.  How can this sort of thing be measured?

    At the end of the school day I gave my congratulations to Year 7 for making it through their first full week of high school and was very corny by asking them to give themselves a pat on the back but they were happy to do so.  I imagined giving myself one too.  Survival, resilience, resisting temptations, and letting go of control…these things are hard to measure but are so important to life and learning.  When are we going to start valuing the unmeasured more?


  2. Look at me: the competition for the student dollar

    19 September 2010 by shartley

    Shani Hartley reviews two of the textbooks on offer for Business Studies students in 2011.

    Business Studies in Action
    by Stephen Chapman
    ISBN 13 9781742161334
    Publisher: Jacaranda
    Expected release date: Nov 2010
    $69.95

    Business Focus Preliminary
    By Mike Horsley, Ian Biddle, Graham Harper, Robert Mulas, Natasha Terry-Armstrong
    ISBN 978 1 44252 909 0
    Publisher: Pearson Secondary
    Expected release date: Dec 2010
    $69.95

    Last year, according to the NSW Board of Studies, approximately 16,000 students sat the HSC Business Studies Examination, making it a very lucrative market for textbook publishers to snare.  Due to a new syllabus being issued for Business Studies in 2011, there is a new batch of textbooks vying for a place on school booklists.  It is my job to make that selection for our students.  However, I am tempted to not use a textbook at all.  I teach in a technology rich environment where students are able to use a range of resources so I’m finding it increasingly hard to justify the purchase of one expensive textbook.

    In the last decade our Business studies students have used three different versions of a Preliminary Business Studies textbook.  The first one we used was published by Longman (since absorbed into Pearson Publishing) and written by Sykes, Hansen and Codsi.  It contained good case studies and diagrams but it was too wordy.  Then we switched to the Leading Edge version by Robert Barlow and Kate Dally because it was easy reading and had a fantastic workbook to accompany it.  However, the text lacked substance so for the last few years we have used Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman and Natalie Devenish, originally under the Wiley label, but now under its Australian school division, Jacaranda. There are sections in this textbook which are too complicated and other areas which could have a little more detail, but overall it has just the right level of depth for our students.  During this time our worksheets and teaching programs have settled into a nice partnership with this textbook but that is about to change.

    The first publisher to woo me was Jacaranda with an emailed invitation to a workshop.  The main author of Business Studies in Action, Stephen Chapman, is an excellent presenter through his knowledge and engaging real life stories from the classroom so I accepted the invitation.

    The workshop was useful for providing an overview of the new syllabus and discussing some ideas with other teachers regarding implementation in the classroom.  The textbook appears professional with engaging photographs and a clear and colourful layout.  Chapman attempts to make students think like business people, particularly with the What would you do section at the start of each chapter.  This supports my Business Studies class motto of ‘keeping it real’.  I encourage students to treat their studies not as school work but as preparation for actually running a business one day.

    Jacaranda offers an online supplement to the textbook including case studies, worksheets and crosswords.  Although this website is still being developed I am surprised it doesn’t have what could be called truly interactive and engaging resources, other than the major business plan project.  The project involves video and a range of images to grab students’ attention but really requires the finesse and sophistication that students now encounter on a regular basis online.  For instance there is no provision for networking within the group version of the project.  The ‘jacaranda plus’ website is the feature Jacaranda is pushing the most but from my school’s highly technological perspective it isn’t a very appealing aspect.

    Soon after I attended the Jacaranda workshop a friendly saleswoman from Pearson visited my school.  The Business Studies textbook she showed me looked like it was merely a hatchet job of the existing version with the same old style of activities, few pictures and a dated colour palette of dark cyan and purple.  It also has online support but similarly to the Jacaranda website it fails to live up to its hype.  Pearson have now also organised a workshop but there is little point in me attending another one.

    In a school immersed in technology such as mine, we are moving away from traditional textbooks and using increasingly more online resources.  Online content is generally included in the exorbitant price charged for textbooks but if teachers only want the online component it is still very expensive.  To go without textbooks and only use the online component, Pearson have said it would be 70% of the cost of the textbook per student.  It would be better if publishers broke their online content into components with small fees for each part.  Teachers could then use only the most suitable aspects for their classes.  Parents are understandably not amused at paying over $60 for a textbook to only have it used a small amount in class.

    That said, due to time constraints, I have chosen Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman to be on our booklist for Year 11 students next year.  There is a distinct cultural change occurring in the teaching and learning environment.  The students are ready, my school is ready but the publishers and some teachers are not.  I am hoping that this time next year I will have constructed a program and negotiated an arrangement with publishers so that we don’t need to commit to just one textbook for the course.  There is no one definitive source of knowledge and it is time classrooms and publishers adapted.

    REFERENCES
     

    Board of Studies NSW Information

    Board of Studies NSW (2010, June)  Business Studies Stage 6 Syllabus retrieved 26 July 2010 <http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/business-studies-st6-syl-from2012.pdf>

    Board of Studies NSW (2009, May 1)  Business Studies to start 2009 HSC,  retrieved 18 September 2010  <http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/media-release/pdf_doc/090501-hsc-exam-timetable.pdf>

    Board of Studies NSW (2010, July 19)  Official Notice – Revised Stage 6 Business Studies syllabus ready for 2011, retrieved 18 September 2010
    <http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/index.cfm/2010/7/19/Official-Notice–New-Business-Studies-Stage-6-Syllabus>

    Information on Jacaranda’s new Business Studies textbook

    Jacaranda (2010)  Business Studies in Action Preliminary Course 3E & eBookPLUS,  retrieved 18 September 2010  <http://www.jaconline.com.au/engine.jsp?page=product&portal=teachers&product$isbn13=9781742161334&product$learningarea=%20COM1%20&product$states=%20NSW%20&product$yearlevel=%2011-12%20&product$subject=%20Business%20Studies%20&product$publicationdate=%20%20&product$series=%20%20&product$resourcetype>

    Jacaranda (2010)  Business Studies in Action Preliminary Course, 3E Page Proofs, retrieved 18 September 2010 <http://catalogimages.johnwiley.com.au/Attachment/17421/1742161332/Business%20Studies%20Page%20Proofs.html>

    Information on Pearson’s new Business Studies textbook

    Pearson Australia (2010)  Store – Business Focus, retrieved 18 September 2010  <http://www.hi.com.au/bookstore/bmoredetail.asp?idVal=2685/6457/45257>

    Pearson Australia (2010)  Business Focus Page Proofs, retrieved 18 September 2010  <http://www.pearsonplaces.com.au/places/pearson_page_proofs/business_focus_page_proofs.aspx> (only available with account access)

    Textbooks based on the previous syllabus

    Chapman, Stephen, Devenish, Natalie and Dhall Mohan  (2006)  Business Studies in Action: Preliminary Course, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, Milton, Qld.

    Dixon, Tim and Smith, James  (2000)  Business Studies: Year 11 Preliminary Course, Leading Edge, Sydney.

    Sykes, D, Hansen, V and Codsi E  (2000)  Business Studies: Preliminary, Longman, South Melbourne.


Skip to toolbar