Update on the national accreditation of the Expanded Core Curriculum

Update on the national accreditation of the Expanded Core Curriculum

Over the last 25 years, a large and growing body of the literature has argued that students with vision impairment
require explicit teaching of the knowledge and skills that are incidentally learned by their peers through vision. The
Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC), devised by Hatlen (1996); consists of nine key areas believed necessary to
compensate for what is incidentally gained by students with regular vision. In Australia, the ECC is supported by
SPEVI (2004) 'in addition to the general (core) curriculum, provision of the Expanded Core Curriculum will maximise
the academic, social, vocational and life skills of learners with vision impairment' (South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment, 2004, p. 12).

However, despite research (Doepel, 2013; Wolffe & Kelly, 2011) that clearly highlights the success of the ECC in
career and life outcomes for older adults, there is still debate about how the ECC can be effectively taught to students with vision impairment in mainstream classrooms (Wolffe & Kelly, 2011), who is responsible, what they will teach and when they can do this (Keil & Cobb, 2019). Lack of understanding about the importance these specific skills play in the long term education of students with vision impairment has also been identified as a barrier to implementing the ECC internationally (Palmer, 2005).

The aim of a national accreditation of the specialist VI curriculum, is to provide a scope, sequence and assessment
of learning progressions that can be undertaken in schools, to count towards the students’ ATAR and tertiary
studies. Students will gain the knowledge of tools and the skills to access content and information for education and
employment. This session will give you an update on where we are up to in the process, what you can do to help and
what the final accreditation means for you.