CHAPTER 9: Teaching to the Middle in Australia: Four Teachers Tell Their Stories
-
Published:2010
Nan Bahr, Donna Pendergast, 2010. "Teaching to the Middle in Australia: Four Teachers Tell Their Stories", Voices from the Middle: Narrative Inquiry By, for and about the Middle Level Community, Kathleen F. Malu
Download citation file:
Middle years of schooling (MYS) reform has colored the landscape of education in Australia for little more than a decade (Pendergast, 2009). There was a season of rather frenetic policy writing in each Australian state and territory in the mid-1990s. Since then there has been an era of reform that has seen the traditional schooling structures creak and has been buffeted by gusty winds of change to effectively accommodate MYS, and alongside it, specialized middle years teacher education. Policy associated with middle years’ school education has been driven largely by isolated state and territory based initiatives. Yet, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs’ (MCEETYA) Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008, p.10) identifies one of its eight interrelated action areas as “enhancing middle years’ development.” In the commitment to action, the elaboration provides the following explanation:
