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Elizabeth Ricketts

Primary School Principal, Catholic Education, Parramatta

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If schooling is supposed to be about personalizing learning why do governments continue to impose mandatory syllabi on schools?

Each Key Learning Area or subject has a set of outcomes that must be taught..
How does this fit with discovery learning and enabling students to pursue learning relevant to themselves?

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  • Claudio b

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    Apr 6 2012: I partly agree with Robert Winner: it's true that syllabi are meant to give you a good grounding in various subjects, which are necessary to further your studies or advance to the next stage. On the other hand, I think syllabi should be designed in such a way as to make you well disposed towards learning. They should also be more flexible so to allow a teacher to modify the schedule in response to student interests.
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      Elizabeth Ricketts

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      Apr 7 2012: Great comment Claudio.Flexibility is the key to everything. I am expending a lot of energy on building teacher capacity so teachers are able to modify things within the framework.

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