• Why We Need Middle Years
• Middle Schools and Sub-Schools
• Support for Students, Teachers and Schools
• Teaching and Learning
  • Curriculum, Assessment
    and Pedagogy
  • Middle Years of
    Schooling Guide
  • Middle Schooling
    Organisation

Useful Links:

Middle Schooling Approaches to Curriculum, Assessment and Pedagogy

Middle Schooling Approaches

The Making the Most of the Middle Years public consultation report prepared in 2005, describes the Principles and Policies Framework for the Middle Years in the Northern Territory.  This report provides teachers, schools and the system with the essential elements from which middle schooling approaches to curriculum, assessment and pedagogy evolve. 

Connecting Curriculum, Assessment and Pedagogy

Connecting curriculum, assessment and pedagogy enables teachers and school to design, provide and monitor learning environments in which students:

• Grow and develop a positive outlook and a sense of wellbeing
• Benefit from dynamic teaching and learning opportunities that challenge them to grow emotionally and intellectually
• Experience an effective transition from their Primary to Middle Years, and an effective preparation for the Senior Years and learning beyond school
• Learn in safe and supportive environments that create a sense of worth and achievement and enable the development of supportive relationships with teachers and peers
• Develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and capabilities through learning experiences that are engaging and provide regular and accurate feedback to monitor progress and facilitate further learning
• Participate in relevant and rigorous programs that target individual needs and enable achievement at or beyond the standards described in the NT Curriculum Framework.

Connecting curriculum assessment and pedagogy for students in the middle years involves teachers and school leaders in remaining focused on the needs of students.  The Middle Schooling teaching and learning model provides teachers with guidelines for designing the range of learning experiences students need to achieve academic, social, emotional and physical outcomes. 

Teaching and learning in the Middle Years (pdf 37Kb)

Middle Years Guide

Student Centred-Curriculum

Student-centred curriculum is based on sound understandings of adolescent needs, interests, maturity, aspirations and their progress along the P-12 continuum of learning.  It recognises that the world our young people will live in will be very different from the world of the previous. 

Student Centred Pedagogy

Student-centred pedagogy in the middle years of schooling promotes and leads to engagement and learning.  Wacholz (2001) states that the research is clear:  the single most important factor in whether young people learn or whether they don’t, is the teacher.

Student Centred-Assessment

Student-centred assessment allows for sustained learning, it reinforces learning, provides new relevance to learning and brings quality to teaching and meaning to learning.  Student-centred assessment is driven by four key developments in education:

• The need to better address student learning in changing times
• The need to assess a broad range of academic, social and other lifelong learning capabilities (EsseNTial Learnings)
• The need for assessment practices themselves to enhance effective teaching and learning
• The need for appropriate record keeping and reporting systems (Cooper, C 1997).

Middle Years Guide

Together with the Northern Territory Curriculum Framework, the Guide to Planning, Teaching, Assessing, and Reporting Learning in the Middle Years of Schooling is a starting point that assists teachers to develop teaching and learning experiences for adolescent learners.