Responding to a national English curriculum: the embedded approach to change of the Catholic Education Office Melbourne

Across Australia the new Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E) has stimulated institutional interpretation and enactment based on jurisdictional and organisational culture and practice. One institution’s response to the change in curriculum is the focus of this article. Catholic Education in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, the sixth largest school system in Australia, has undertaken implementation of the AusVELS: English F-10 (Victorian Essential Learning Standards: Foundation to Year 10) curriculum using an embedded approach. Coordinating the work of personnel charged with implementation of the new curriculum, key features of this approach include literacy leadership, the professional learning practices of using a knowledge building cycle of inquiry and professional learning teams, distinctive literacy-based projects and the system priority of school improvement. Analysis of interview and documentary data has been methodologically informed by Institutional Ethnography and Bourdieusian field analysis. Understanding of specific institutional responses to the AC:E may provide orientation for informed reflection on, and comparative analysis of, curriculum implementation experiences and practices.