Working backwards towards curriculum: on the curricular implications of quality teaching

This essay builds from ongoing development and research work on a model of pedagogy, from New South Wales, Australia, known as the Quality Teaching model. Where international calls for the professional development and certification of teachers rely on mechanisms of credentialing, often with scant direct attention to the acts of teaching, the NSW Quality Teaching model was developed specifically to examine classroom practice and assessment with a shared, generic, analytical framework across subject areas in K-12 settings. The article presents a summary and some elaboration of the Quality Teaching model and then raises the question of just what implications for curriculum lie underneath the push for improving teaching. Using this model, for example, it is clear that many of our long standing curricular debates must be soundly re-cast if the ideals of Quality Teaching are to be taken seriously. Coming from a context where curriculum is designed and governed centrally, in very conventional terms, the curriculum implications of Quality Teaching raise a big challange for international understandings of just what is included in school curricul