Tax law teaching : the move from traditional models of curriculum to productive authentic forms

Curriculum can be viewed as one of three message systems used in the learning environment. The remaining two message systems are pedagogy and assessment. The formal concept of curriculum is relatively new to the academic world. It has been examined in detailed by well-known educational scholars including Tyler, Taber, Wheeler, Nicholls, Skilbeck, Walker and Stenhouse, principally in the second half of the twentieth century.1 Curriculum has been viewed traditionally as ‘what is taught’ as opposed to the pedagogic concepts of ‘how you teach’ and ‘how you examine what you have taught’ (otherwise commonly referred to as ‘assessment’). This paper explores the historical constructs of the concept of curriculum and their formal representations, and then examines the move towards the more holistic approach of authentic or productive curriculum, in the context of the teaching of taxation or revenue-based units in Australian law schools