Curriculum Perspectives (2019) 39:169–177
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-019-00079-z
THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM
General capabilities in the Australian curriculum: promise,
problems and prospects
Rob Gilbert 1
Published online: 4 July 2019
# Australian Curriculum Studies Association 2019
Abstract
General capabilities, largely derived from international developments of twentieth-century skills, form one of the three basic dimensions of the Australian Curriculum, but the integration of the capabilities into a subject-based curriculum presents significant challenges.
This article reviews the development of the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum and their implementation in state curricula
and considers their prospects for success. It examines key criticisms of the approach and challenges to its success, such as the problem
of a matrix approach to curriculum and the critique of their concept of knowledge. The article concludes by assessing the future
prospects of the capabilities.
Keywords Curriculum . Twentieth century skills Curriculum development . Curriculum knowledge . Australian curriculum
Introduction
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority ((ACARA), 2011) describes the structure of the
Australian Curriculum as ‘a three-dimensional curriculum that
recognises the central importance of disciplinary knowledge,
skills and understanding, general capabilities and crosscurriculum priorities’ (ACARA 2017c). The general capabilities
dimension is elaborated as follows:
Alongside disciplinary knowledge, the Australian
Curriculum provides seven general capabilities: Literacy;
Numeracy; Information and Communication Technology
Capability; Critical and Creative Thinking; Personal and
Social Capability; Ethical Understanding; and Intercultural
Understanding. The general capabilities comprise an integrated and interconnected set of knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that apply across subject-based content and equip students to be lifelong learners and be able
to operate with confidence in a complex, information-rich,
globalised world. (ACARA 2017c)
These statements from version 8.3 of the curriculum suggest that general capabilities are a key part of the curriculum, a
dimension standing ‘alongside’ and equivalent in structural
terms to disciplinary subject areas. This is a stronger statement
of their status than that which appeared in the earlier version
7.5 of the curriculum, which stated that ‘The Australian
Curriculum focuses on learning area content and achievement
standards that describe what students will learn and teachers
will teach. It also gives attention to seven general capabilities
that are important for life and work in the 21st century’
(ACARA 2017a).
This attempt to clarify and strengthen the role of the general
capabilities in the curriculum may be evidence of the challenges in ensuring their full and proper implementation.
Some uncertainty around the nature, role and implementation
of the general capabilities is not surprising, for they represent
an approach to curriculum development that has a relatively
short history, and one that has been fraught with difficulty and
criticism. This paper1 reviews the development of the general
capabilities in the Australian Curriculum (AC) with a view to
reflecting on their place in the curriculum, their standing in the
face of educational debates and criticism and their prospects
for success.
* Rob Gilbert
rob.gilbert@uq.edu.au
1
1
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of
Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4067, Australia
This paper was first published in Reid, A., & Price, D. (Eds.), (2018). The
Australian Curriculum: Promises, Problems and Possibilities, Canberra:
Australian Curriculum Studies Association.
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The development of the general capabilities
The origins and development of the general capabilities as specified in the AC are not well documented. One authoritative account by the then Chair of ACARA (McGaw 2013) traces them
back to the employment skills or competencies identified in the
Finn and Mayer committee reports of the early 1990s (see Moyle
2010). These early developments were given further impetus by
international interest in 21st century skills, especially as promoted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), of which McGaw was Director for
Education from 1998 to 2005.
An important development was Reid’s 2005 report which
proposed a capabilities approach to the AC, including a set of
capabilities with elements similar to those which now exist. The
firmest foundation of the general capabilities can be found in the
Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young
Australians (MCEETYA 2008), which stated that the curriculum
should develop:
General capabilities that underpin flexible and analytical thinking, a capacity to work with others and
an ability to move across subject disciplines to develop new expertise
The curriculum will support young people to develop a
range of generic and employability skills that have particular application to the world of work and further education
and training, such as planning and organising, the ability to
think flexibly, to communicate well and to work in teams.
Young people also need to develop the capacity to think
creatively, innovate, solve problems and engage with new
disciplines. (p. 13).
Some aspects of this provenance and the language of the
Melbourne Declaration give weight to arguments by critics
who identify an overly economistic character in the general capabilities, though prima facie particular capabilities such as critical and creative thinking, ethical understanding and intercultural
understanding seem to have little necessary connection to economic goals.
As Donnelly and Wiltshire (2014 p. 131) point out in their
Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final report, descriptions
of the capabilities within ACARA publications have varied over
time. As a precise rationale for and explanation of these variations have not been presented, they have been difficult to
interpret.
One instance of this lack of close explanation is the choice of
the term ‘capabilities’ to describe this dimension of the curriculum. The definition of the term in the AC is reasonably clear:
general capabilities comprise a set of ‘knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that apply across subject-based content
and equip students to be lifelong learners and be able to operate
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
with confidence in a complex, information-rich, globalised
world’ (ACARA 2017c). However, it is less clear why this term
has been chosen over more common alternatives such as skills or
competencies. Some commentators have linked the use of the
term to that of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (Reid 2005;
Yates and Collins 2010). As Lambert (2014) explains:
The significance of the capabilities approach, derived from
Amartya Sen’s welfare economics and interest in human
potentials and development, lies in its concern to extend
the freedoms of young people to think: to discern, to select
and to make informed and defensible choices. (p. 24)
However, there is no evidence of a connection to this notion
of capabilities in published ACARA curriculum documents.
There is also little obvious connection between the implications
of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s frameworks and the identified general
capabilities (Kelly 2012), though this is not to say that the two
schemes are incompatible, despite suggestions by Skourdoumbis
(2015) that the general capabilities represent a more limited functional competence approach. McGaw (2013) makes a more mundane distinction relating to the term general capabilities: ‘The
new Australian Curriculum pays serious attention to what are
referred to as 21st century skills but does not use that nomenclature because the skills are not unique to the 21st century’ (p. 4). A
clearer statement about the nature of the capabilities would be
useful in establishing their significance, and could be a defence
against some of the criticisms of them to be considered later in
this chapter.
The C21 skills movement
The inclusion of the general capabilities can be seen as part of
the more general international developments of the 21st century (C21) skills. Significant among these was the framework
developed by the OECD (2005) entitled Twenty-first century
skills and competences for new millennium learners in OECD
countries (Ananiadou and Claro 2009). This formulation includes cognitive skills (such as problem solving and critical
thinking), intrapersonal skills (e.g. self-management, adaptability), interpersonal skills (e.g. communication, teamwork,
cultural sensitivity) and technical skills (e.g. research and information skills, entrepreneurial skills and financial literacy).
Similarly, in the USA, the partnership for the 21st Century
Skills (2009) has promoted a curriculum framework around a
set of ‘21st Century Themes’, which consist of global awareness and financial, civic, health and environmental literacy.
These themes are underpinned by ‘21st century skills’:
&
learning and innovation skills (such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving)
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
&
&
information, media and technology skills (information literacy, media literacy, information and communication
technology (ICT) literacy)
life and career skills (initiative and self-direction).
Versions of C21 skills as desirable curriculum outcomes
are now commonplace in curricula around the world
(Saavedra and Opfer 2012; Amadio 2013; Ministry of
Education Ontario 2015; Queensland Curriculum and
Assessment Authority 2015; Chu et al. 2017). ‘A rapid assessment of curriculum frameworks and policies in countries from
all regions in the world ... shows that almost 90 countries—
including some sub-federal entities—refer to generic competences in their general education curricula’ (Tedesco, Opertti
and Amadio 2013, p. 11).
The range and number of the relevant skills identified by
the OECD and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is considerable, and has been described as ‘too long and complicated’ (National Education Association n.d.). As a result, their
translation in the various education systems has been a process
of reducing and simplifying this range. However, the processes by which this has been done, and the particular versions
which result, are seldom clearly argued, so that the outcomes
of the process often seem ad hoc.
Particularly relevant in the Australian context is the
Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21s)
Project (Griffin, McGaw and Care 2012; Griffin and Care
2015), an international research initiative headquartered at
the University of Melbourne and sponsored by Cisco, Intel
and Microsoft. An analysis of the general capabilities in the
AC describes them as ‘demonstrating the strong alignment
between the national initiative and the global ATC21S project’
(Care, Scoular and Bui 2015, p. 185).
While the nature and extent of their influence on the AC are
unclear, these international links are of interest in a number of
ways. The focus on skills and the role of the OECD and major
corporations again strengthen the association of general
capabilities with economic and vocational goals. The links
also open the Australian general capabilities, rightly or
wrongly, to criticisms made of the global focus on
reductionist skills and competencies in the curriculum. For
instance, Biesta and Priestley (2013) raise questions about
the use of competencies and capacities, including the
following:
&
&
&
their tendency to be specified in long lists leading to a
‘tick-box curriculum’
the possibility that they will focus on concrete functional
skills and omit the deeper understanding and judgement
needed to apply the skills in real and diverse situations
the challenge of identifying competencies that will provide students with the adaptability to deal with an unpredictable future
171
&
the problem that identifying competencies might lock students into a process of socialisation and adaptation to the
present rather than fostering critical democratic agency.
These are important questions, some of which will be considered later in this chapter.
Issues with a matrix approach to generic skills
or capacities
The challenges of a matrix approach to curriculum design, in
which C21 skills or general capabilities must be integrated
across a range of school subjects, have been widely remarked
on (Reid 2005; Moyle 2010; Tedesco et al. 2013). These challenges include the sense that a matrix approach overly complicates curriculum planning, that the skills and capabilities
are inevitably seen as ‘add-ons’ and of secondary importance,
and that linking capabilities to subjects tends to be an arbitrary
and forced process.
At the heart of this problem is the fact that such curricula
‘tend to provide little guidance on how to deal with future
focused skills and competencies when curriculum policy
statements both emphasize competencies, connectivity and
integration, while also presenting organizational structures
that signal the insulation of subject boundaries’ (Sinnema
and Aitken 2013, p. 158). This comment certainly applies to
the AC.
Despite the difficulties of this process, and in response to
criticisms that such skills reduce the significance of disciplinary knowledge, recent proposals reflect an increasing emphasis on the development of skills through the subject disciplines, rather than promoting them as a series of stand-alone
competencies (Saavedra and Opfer 2012; Ercikan and Oliveri
2016). An interesting example is the New York Academy of
Sciences development of core competencies, essential skills
and supporting attributes seen to be required for best practice
in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education if students are to ‘thrive in the modern workplace’ (Global
STEM Alliance 2016). The substantial elaboration of the role
of these capabilities in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] education is noteworthy, and goes beyond the mere lip service sometimes seen in such attempts:
‘To be Exemplary in these areas, materials must include explicit guidance for instruction and assessment of a given competency, including rubrics or instructions for interpreting assessment outcomes’ (Global STEM Alliance 2016, p. 4).
Note that, while C21 skills have been criticised for their
lack of disciplinary depth, they are nonetheless complex and
demanding abilities, as demonstrated in discussions of how
they might be assessed (Ercikan and Oliveri 2016). This complexity raises the question of whether these skills, capacities or
172
capabilities can involve the depth of knowledge and abilities
often said to be the exclusive preserve of disciplines.
General capabilities and the Australian
experience
The development of the general capabilities in the AC has
been a matter of debate from its inception. One obvious problem was that the general capabilities were identified after work
on developing subjects had begun.
In the course of the development of the curriculum, the
Australian Curriculum Coalition (2011 p. 19), a widely representative forum of presidents, executive officers and executive
directors of national professional and academic associations,
expressed ‘the most serious concern’ at the lack of a ‘blueprint
of the whole-curriculum picture’ in the development of the
AC. The coalition expressed concerns that ‘substantial additional work’ was required on the general capabilities and a
range of other matters. The coalition noted the need for clarity
about the general capabilities and the ‘limited and uneven
emphasis in the draft documents’ (Australian Curriculum
Coalition 2011, p. 21).
It can be argued that these issues remain. However, considerable work has gone into elaborating the general capabilities
through the development for each capability of key ideas,
learning continua and general advice on incorporating the capability in each learning area. While useful, these resources
leave much to be done to construct a coherent and cohesive
scheme in which the development of learning in the subject
areas, the general capabilities and the cross-curriculum priorities can proceed together in mutually beneficial ways.
Despite these challenges, the general capabilities have generally been well received in schools. In its General capabilities consultation report, ACARA (2011) reported ‘very high
levels of support (over 80 per cent approval) for the general
capabilities in the Australian Curriculum’ (p. 7). Care et al.
(2015) also report that teachers and school leaders involved in
the ATC21s project ‘have been overwhelmingly supportive of
Australia’s participation in ATC21s’ (p. 197). The Review of
the Australian Curriculum (Donnelly and Wiltshire 2014)
found considerable support for the capabilities:
The majority of submissions to the Review, as do those
individuals and organisations involved in consultations,
support the inclusion of general capabilities as an essential part of the Australian Curriculum. There is widespread agreement that the cross-curricular capabilities
meet the needs of 21st century learning. (p. 131)
Notwithstanding this support from schools and related organisations, submissions to the Donnelly and Wiltshire review
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
included some negative comment. More telling, however,
were criticisms brought by the review authors themselves.
They argued that the general capabilities were overly utilitarian, and questioned the value of identifying generic capabilities at all: ‘The argument that capabilities like creative thinking and learning how to learn can be applied across a range of
subjects or that they are generic in nature ignores the reality
that they are domain specific’ (Donnelly and Wiltshire 2014,
p. 133). This sentiment reflects the problems with a matrix
approach to developing generic capacities identified above
as a commonly expressed issue with C21 skills. In this case,
the result was that Donnelly and Wiltshire (2014) recommended that:
With the exception of literacy, numeracy and ICT that
continue as they currently are dealt with in the
Australian Curriculum, the remaining four general capabilities are no longer treated in a cross-curricular fashion. Critical and creative thinking, personal and social
capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding should be embedded only in those subjects and
areas of learning where relevant and where they can be
dealt with in a comprehensive and detailed fashion. (p.
248)
This recommendation raised more questions than it answered, since the review authors did not suggest where in
the current subjects of the curriculum these capabilities might
best be dealt with. The current attempts to incorporate these
general capabilities within the learning areas are far from impressive (Gilbert 2012), and the question must be asked
whether the existing subjects can deal with all of them in
any effective way.
The review’s recommendation on the general capabilities
was not generally well received. The Australian government
(2014) response to the review indicated that it would ‘seek
further input from education ministers and ACARA before
determining a final position on the current embedded approach in general capabilities’ (p. 8). In the revisions to the
curriculum that followed the review, no changes were made to
the general capabilities. Work in support of the capabilities
continues, including plans ‘to expand the scope of the sample
National Assessment Program ... to also address critical and
creative thinking, ethical understanding, intercultural understanding and personal and social capability’ (ACARA 2016).
However, the challenges of the matrix approach to the general capabilities remain, and Skourdoumbis’ (2016) report of a
study of the general capabilities in four secondary schools is
likely to be common in Australian schools: ‘While acknowledging their existence, teachers were not consistently planning
and teaching with the general capabilities in mind …
Nonetheless, all tended to endorse their importance and relevance to students’ (p. 548).
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
Responses in the Australian states
Implementation of the AC is the responsibility of the states.
While the ACARA website states that ‘Teachers are expected
to teach and assess general capabilities to the extent that they
are incorporated within learning area content’ (ACARA
2017b), the outcome of this injunction will depend almost
entirely (at least for state schools) on how the capabilities
are translated into the various state curricula. This translation
is quite varied, and recent activity in the states suggests that
there will be considerable diversity in how the general capabilities are taken up.
In the New South Wales (NSW) government’s submission
to the Review of the Australian Curriculum, the NSW Board
of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (2014)
commented that:
Among the general capabilities, literacy and numeracy
are considered key and mandatory learning requirements for all students in NSW ...
The other general capabilities ... are not as precisely
defined and in NSW have no status as an alternative
organisational frame to the subject disciplines ... the
general capabilities are embedded where appropriate
within the NSW content. They are also available for
teachers as useful reference points for thematic programming and as illustrative material to assist in
contextualising the content learning.
The approach to the general capabilities in the NSW
syllabuses is similar to that in the AC. For instance, the
2012 NSW history K–10 syllabus includes 13 elements
of learning across the curriculum, including the seven
general capabilities. There are statements indicating how
each capability can form part of historical study, and an
icon system similar to that in the AC to indicate where
the capabilities can be dealt with. However, as with the
AC, when the specified syllabus content is analysed, the
inclusion of the general capabilities is far from obvious.
For instance, in the history syllabus, there is no reference
in the stated syllabus content or skills to ethical understanding or intercultural understanding. It is also interesting that, where the capabilities icons do appear, they are
linked to content descriptions, but not to concepts or
inquiry skills.
Queensland takes a similar approach. Recent developments in Queensland have seen the production of draft
statements for the learning area curricula for each year
level. Each statement contains a substantial section on
general capabilities, distinguishing the four ‘capabilities
that support students to be successful learners’ (literacy,
numeracy, ICT, critical and creative thinking) and the
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‘capabilities that develop ways of being, behaving and
learning to live with others’ (personal and social capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding)
(Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority
2015). However, the overview simply refers to the hyperlinks to the capabilities in the AC, so that the Queensland
development adds little to the original formulations.
Of particular interest is the approach taken in Victoria,
which is markedly different from those described earlier.
Like the Queensland approach, the Victorian Curriculum
and Assessment Authority (VCAA) distinguishes literacy, numeracy and ICT, which it claims can be integrated within
relevant parts of the curriculum, from the remaining capabilities, which ‘are constituted by a discrete set of knowledge and
skills that are not fully incorporated in any one of the learning
areas’ (VCAA 2015, p. 44). However, the VCAA goes further, describing as ‘a key innovation’ its decision to position
the capabilities ‘as areas of learning in their own right rather
than simply indicating how they might be drawn out in different learning areas’ (VCAA 2015 p. 12). The approach:
provides a conceptual model that enables the curriculum
to include both learning areas and capabilities rather
than setting up a false binary between these two categories of knowledge and skills ... For this reason, the symbols used on the Australian Curriculum website to indicate opportunities in the curriculum for students to acquire the general capabilities have not been included in
the Victorian Curriculum F–10. Rather, the capabilities
are represented in the curriculum as distinct areas of
learning for the purposes of curriculum planning, assessment and the reporting of student achievement. (p. 44)
The approaches of the NSW, Queensland and other state
education systems which simply draw on the national approach do little to remedy the inadequacies of the AC. The
proposed links between the capabilities and subject content
are not uniformly convincing. More importantly, inserting
icons in curriculum content to indicate possible links to the
capabilities is not an adequate strategy, since it fails to address
the challenge of ensuring a developmental approach to the
capabilities and their key ideas, dominated as they must be
under this strategy by considerations of the learning area into
which they are to be inserted.
On the other hand, the Victorian approach is an interesting
attempt to solve these problems. It acts on the convincing
argument that the capabilities of literacy, numeracy, ICT and
possibly thinking can readily be integrated across the curriculum as skills supporting learning, while ethical and intercultural understanding and personal and social capability are distinct areas of knowledge, skills and dispositions which cannot
be addressed with integrity in the same way.
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General capabilities and the knowledge
critique
As indicated earlier, the move in curriculum development to
generic C21 skills has been widely criticised: at times for an
overly vocational emphasis as distinct from a liberal humanist
one; at other times for proposing artificially constructed curriculum content which lacks the tradition and authenticity of
established disciplines.
Among the most recent and widely cited critics is English
sociologist of education Michael Young, whose writings have
called for a return to the subject-based curriculum as the most
important aspect of learning, rather than the distractions from
knowledge which have resulted from such developments as
C21 skills (Young 2008, 2011, 2013; Young and Muller 2013,
2016). Young’s influence has been considerable, including in
Australia. His work is cited positively in the Review of the
Australian Curriculum report (Donnelly and Wiltshire 2014),
and his arguments are addressed in the VCAA (2015) document about the Victorian approach to the general capabilities.
Young’s criticisms range widely over a number of aspects
of contemporary educational thinking and practice. He claims
that there is a crisis in curriculum theory because of an overemphasis on a constructivist approach to students’ learning
needs and what is meaningful to them through everyday
knowledge, rather than on the intrinsic significance of specialist knowledge in the disciplines (Young 2013 p. 106). Young
also criticises outcomes-based education for what he sees as
its prescriptive narrowing of curriculum content. In response
to these developments, he has called for a revived focus on
knowledge in the curriculum, on ‘bringing knowledge back
in’ (Young 2008).
It is not possible or necessary to consider all of Young’s
criticisms of contemporary curriculum development here.
Much of Young’s motivation has been attributed to his experience of vocational education in South Africa, which seems
to have been particularly problematic in its ‘atomised tasks ...
characterised by the following of scripts provided by long
check lists of actions and behaviours’ (Pepper 2013, p. 8).
This may explain a tendency for Young to underestimate the
diversity of the generic approaches to curriculum elements he
criticises. For instance, outcomes-based education can be a
much more flexible and open approach to curriculum than
Young seems to believe, and constructivism is a wellestablished approach to science learning which would seem
to contribute to his desire for a conceptual approach to the
teaching of science.
A number of writers have challenged aspects of Young’s
arguments (Beck 2012; Scott 2014; Roberts 2014; Zipin et al.
2015), but his fundamental commitment to the need for a
curriculum organised around the progressive development of
concepts is generally accepted. McPhail and Rata (2016) see
this as a question of ‘epistemic coherence’, ‘a complex and
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
integrated arrangement of systems of meaning built cumulatively over time by intellectual communities’ (p. 59). In their
view, C21 approaches lack this epistemic structure: ‘there is
no internal structuring principle, that is, an episteme, which
organises the concepts into coherent systems of meaning’ (p.
65).
It should be acknowledged that the C21 skills movement
does not define itself simply in terms of atomistic, routine or
‘basic’ skills. The OECD (2005) key competency conceptual
framework identified three broad categories of ability: to use
tools interactively (language, technology, etc.), to engage with
others in heterogeneous groups and to take responsibility for
managing their own lives in the broader social context and act
autonomously. Significantly, however:
at the centre of the framework of key competencies is
the ability of individuals to think for themselves as an
expression of moral and intellectual maturity, and to take
responsibility for their learning and for their actions ...
reflectiveness implies the use of metacognitive skills
(thinking about thinking), creative abilities and taking
a critical stance ... This requires individuals to reach a
level of social maturity that allows them to distance
themselves from social pressures, take different perspectives, make independent judgments and take responsibility for their actions. (OECD 2005 pp. 8–9)
Whether the various renditions of C21 skills have adequately captured this reflective and critical dimension is an
important question, but the aspirations of the C21 movement
have been more complex and principled than is often
acknowledged.
Nonetheless, this point does not address the specific issue of
structured conceptual schemes, which Young and others rightly
identify as a crucial requirement of a worthy curriculum. In the
case of the AC, Yates (2017) applies Young’s arguments to general capabilities with the following warning:
Curriculum design efforts that try to begin with a focus
on future skills and capabilities run the risk of producing
a fairly shallow curriculum that repeats the same aspirations (problem-solving, communication) over and over
again, but fails to connect deeply with underpinning
knowledge and learning. (p. 178)
Such warnings are salutary, since there is no question that
shallowness can result if an atomistic competency approach to
basic skills results in a list of undifferentiated skills devoid of
critical understanding and conceptual development. It is difficult to see, however, that this criticism is valid when looked at
specifically in the context of the general capabilities, for the
Curric Perspect (2019) 39:169–177
differences among the seven capabilities warrant a more discriminating analysis. As has been observed above, school systems such as Queensland and Victoria distinguish between
capabilities which are tools for learning (literacy, numeracy,
ICT, critical and creative thinking), and the more substantive
capabilities of personal and social capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding.
Literacy, numeracy and ICT can be seen in the context of
Young’s (2008) observation that ‘It is the symbolic nature of
our relationship to the world that is the basis of our knowledge, and it is that relationship that distinguishes us as human
beings’ (p. xvi). This basic symbolic competence can convincingly be seen as a general ability, notwithstanding the differences in particular intellectual or social discourses and genres.
Accordingly, a matrix approach to integrating these capabilities across the curriculum seems very plausible, and their links
with corresponding subjects in the curriculum strengthen this
process. The history of cross-curriculum approaches in these
capabilities is a long one, and has not generally been seen as a
distraction from the disciplines, but as a way of augmenting
the practice of the subject as well as the abilities of students in
the wider application of the general skills.
With respect to the three capabilities which the Queensland
Curriculum and Assessment Authority calls ‘capabilities that
develop ways of being, behaving and learning to live with
others’, it is unlikely that a broad integrative crosscurriculum approach will be adequate. To see these as simply
‘tools’ which can be applied across discourses and contexts is
to underestimate their distinctive intellectual substance and
processes of application. Ethical and intercultural
understanding, for instance, is based in established traditions
of inquiry with their own concepts, theories, inquiry processes
and modes of application. This would support the VCAA
(2015) comment that these capabilities form discrete sets of
knowledge and skills.
The question of conceptual structure and progressive development of depth remains an important issue. While this is
an important test to apply to any curriculum, it is not clear why
the key ideas and learning continua developed for the capabilities cannot in principle provide, in the words of McPhail and
Rata (2016), an ‘internal structuring principle, that is, an
episteme, which organises the concepts into coherent systems
of meaning’ (p. 65).
In the face of the debates about C21 skills and knowledge
in the curriculum, and criticisms of matrix approaches to generic skills and abilities, the Australian general capabilities
seem, if not invulnerable to critique, at least credible when
looked at closely along the lines discussed here. The general
capabilities are not an atomised list of low-level competencies,
and they can be construed in structured terms of key ideas and
learning continua. If viewed through the more precise lens of
the Victorian approach, their potential for quality learning of
matters of real importance seems persuasive.
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Conclusion
In this paper, I have discussed the nature and development of
the general capabilities in the AC. Like the global developments of C21 skills to which they are related, the general
capabilities and the matrix approach to incorporating them
have been subjected to criticism. Criticisms of the complexity
of the matrix approach are clearly valid. Criticisms arising
from the recent concerns for bringing knowledge back in are
less persuasive if the general capabilities are seen as having a
number of different dimensions, some of which are quite appropriate for a cross-curriculum approach, with others involving a more conceptual horizontal and vertical framing.
The future of the general capabilities, like the curriculum as
a whole, is moot, and it is important that the continuing review
and development of the AC address the issues that have arisen
in this discussion. The AC remains crowded, despite recent
attempts to simplify it, and the general capabilities contribute
to this. A continuing question is likely to be why these particular capabilities have been chosen, and whether others are
more worthy of inclusion. To some extent, this also depends
on the future of the subject curriculum, since the inclusion of
some of the general capabilities, like ethical understanding
and intercultural understanding, is an implicit judgement that
the subject curriculum is lacking in these areas, which it clearly is. The general capabilities contribute aspects to the curriculum that warrant inclusion, but ensuring their effectiveness
will always remain a challenge to the extent that they are seen
as secondary to the subject curriculum.
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