Curriculum: making it work

Planning an appropriate and relevant lesson, for pre-schoolers, primary or secondary students, is one of the hardest challenges teachers face. Even when there are detailed syllabi and strong centralized control over subject matter, as in all state education systems in Australia, it is the teacher's job to make it all work. The reality, whatever the external context, is that teachers can and do exercise significant influence over the curriculum and have the major say in what happens within their own classrooms. This situation offers great rewards to those teachers who adopt a lesson-planning strategy of research, reflection, and negotiation. The alternative is to 'teach' in classrooms clogged by tedium and mediocrity.