Charlotte Pezaro

Unit planning is very important. It is something all teachers continue to do throughout their career as a teacher.

To me, unit plans are a great place for teachers to demonstrate their professionalism. To demonstrate their thinking, teachers should treat unit plans as dynamic accounts of their teaching, rather than static records of their intentions. Treating unit plans as dynamic accounts enables teachers to explain what they have done (for others or for the future), justify their plans and decisions, analyse the impact of their actions (for student learning), and evaluate their teaching.

I hope this post helps teachers to develop their unit plans as dynamic accounts and reflect on the purposes of planning and teaching.

In a report released on Monday 27 November, 2023, educational reform consultancy Learning First claims to have conducted the first detailed benchmarking of the content of the Australian science curriculum against seven high-performing and comparable systems around the world.

The claim that this is the first benchmarking activity is just one of many errors in the report, which is rife with unsubstantiated claims, incomplete evidence, and gross assumptions, the most disturbing of which is that more “content” is a key indicator of quality curriculum (with the implication that good teaching is all about transmission of content).

Learning First is a company that claims to “build relationships… based on honesty, integrity and deep experience and expertise” and whose clients “include federal governments in various parts of the world.” Given their activities and clients, this report is worth scrutiny.