We Talk About How to Teach, But Forget What We Teach
We’ve been talking a lot about how we teach
Pedagogy is everywhere right now.
Direct instruction. Explicit teaching. Inquiry learning. Project based learning.
The conversations are constant and often conflicting.
But in the middle of all this focus on how, we’ve quietly lost sight of something essential.
The what.
Our curriculum.
What we are actually meant to teach.
The curriculum swing we rarely name
Just like pedagogy, curriculum has experienced its own swing.
At one end, curriculum becomes loose and unclear. Learning is happening, often in rich and engaging ways, but educators are unsure how it connects back to curriculum requirements. Achievement standards and content descriptors feel distant or fuzzy, something we know exists but don’t always anchor to.
At the other end, curriculum turns into a checklist. Everything must be covered. Pace becomes the priority. There’s little space to stop, respond to student need, or question whether learning is actually landing. The belief becomes that more content equals better outcomes.
Neither extreme serves teachers or students well.
When clarity disappears, workload grows
Before I stepped fully into supporting educator wellbeing, my work across leadership roles centred on bringing curriculum and pedagogy back together.
That work sat firmly on two foundations from the Australian Institute for Teacher and School Leadership standards:
Know your students and how they learn.
Know the content and how to teach it.
Right now, many schools have drifted from how these two elements work together. And when that happens, it doesn’t just affect learning. It affects workload, confidence, and wellbeing.
When educators aren’t clear on what they are teaching, everything takes longer. Planning feels heavier. Decision making becomes exhausting. Doubt creeps in.
Questions worth asking, without judgement
This isn’t about blame. It’s about checking for understanding.
Some useful questions for schools and leadership teams include:
Do educators know how to sequence and map the curriculum?
Do they understand what achievement standards and content descriptors actually mean?
Can they explain what these look like in their own classroom?
Do they know how daily lessons link back to outcomes?
Are units intentionally designed to build towards a clear outcome?
How often are teams engaging with the curriculum itself, not just resources?
If the answer to some of these is no, that’s not a failure. It’s information.
Curriculum is a wellbeing issue
This is where my work has evolved.
When we talk about workload, we must also talk about competence, autonomy, and mastery. Educators feel better, and work more sustainably, when they understand both how they teach and what they are teaching.
Curriculum clarity reduces cognitive load.
It strengthens professional confidence.
It supports better planning, collaboration, and decision making.
Wellbeing doesn’t sit outside this work. It grows from it.
What this means for schools
The way forward isn’t another program or resource.
It’s building educator capacity around curriculum understanding, sequencing, and design. It’s creating shared clarity so teachers aren’t carrying the thinking alone. It’s designing systems that support consistency without rigidity.
This is where much of my work now sits, especially in strategic improvement days with educators, teams, and leadership. It’s also a strong signal of where this work is heading in 2026.
Not away from wellbeing, but deeper into the foundations that make wellbeing possible.
You can find more here about my current programs I am offering schools.
