The mother hen, chickens or roosters: who has control over curriculum change in the chookyard

Abstract

The exploration of enabling and constraining issues and characteristics embedded in the social, cultural and physical contexts of Sunstate College – a pseudonym – forms the framework for this paper. The construction and implementation of the Health and Physical Education key learning area during 1995 to 1998 explicated micropolitical factors that made the curriculum change process complicated and problematic. The metaphor of ‘chookyard’, with its distinct hierarchies and boundaries, was used as a topical approach to understanding curriculum control, and in particular, the enabling and constraining factors.