• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.51-73
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• 2011

In Australia, school education had maintained a state-based curriculum for a long time. However recently, Australia developed national curriculum and plans to implement it from 2011. It is meaningful to review why Australia tries to break with the tradition kept for many years and hand over the right to decide school curriculum from the states or territories to the nation, which is opposite from the Korean situation. Especially, because in Australia the introduction of national curriculum is regarded as one of the education revolutions, we need to investigate how the fundamental change corresponding to the 'revolution' is revealed in national curriculum. The purpose of this article is to look through process of the development and significant features about the national curriculum which Australia implements for the first time. To achieve the purpose, the article analyzes national curriculum of Australia in three ways. First, it reviews the process of introduction and development of the national curriculum. Second, the article investigates the features of curriculum guidelines and subject curriculum, focused on the structure of it. Finally, it discusses several implications that the case of Australia gives to the system of the Korean national curriculum.