The Absence of Knowledge in Australian Curriculum Reforms LYN YATES & CHERRY COLLINS Introduction In Australia, curriculum has been the subject of vigorous national debate in recent years, debates both about who should control curriculum and about what should be included in subjects such as English and History and what forms pedagogy should take. Curriculum governance in Australia is allocated by the Constitution to the Australian State governments and different State histories and structures of schooling and curriculum are evident. In recent times, the Commonwealth government has sought a more important role as a driver of curriculum policy, sometimes in opposition to States, sometimes in concert with them, and currently, a new national curriculum and assessment authority has been established with the agreement of both States and Commonwealth. It will play a more important future role in the shape of curriculum activity in Australia. This article draws on a research project that studied shifts in curriculum policy initiatives across Australia over recent decades, and in particular changing curriculum policy formulations across each of the six Australian States from 1975 to 2005. 1 We argue in this article that in these policies there was a strong shift over the period we are examining from an emphasis on knowing things to being able to do things. In the interviews we conducted with senior curriculum actors we also noted how rarely ‘knowledge’ came into the frame of their talk about curriculum, com- pared with a focus on outcomes, politics and management of resources; or compared with a focus on the developing child (from a cognitive developmental perspective). The article focuses on two initiatives that were widely (though not universally) influential: an attempt to develop a common Australian template of ‘Statements and Profiles’ for curriculum across different subjects in the late 80s and early 90s; and an upsurge of recasting of curriculum documents in terms of ‘Essential Learnings’ a decade later.The issues we take up in the article are: what conceptions and framings of knowledge were at work in the new developments, and what specificities in how curriculum is made in Australia contributed to the form of the policies that eventuated? 2 The context of our project and the background of this special issue are a range of concerns and developments that are heard and seen globally. Many countries in recent times have recast their curriculum policies and been drawn into ways of comparing and managing curriculum influenced by bodies such as OECD. At the same time, in schooling as in post-school and higher education, there is an upsurge of debate about how knowledge should be conceptualised and enacted. In recent debates about knowledge, writers such as Moore, Muller andYoung (Moore & Muller, 1999; Moore &Young, 2001; Muller, 2000; Young, 2008) see European Journal of Education,Vol. 45, No. 1, 2010, Part I © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.