“Solving” the curriculum resource “problem”? A critical policy analysis

With the proliferation of the online curriculum resource marketplace, policy actors are increasingly looking to invest in curated hubs of ready-made resources. Policy discourses indicate this phenomenon is heralded worldwide as a panacea for improving teacher workload issues and student achievement. Focusing on Australia, this article examines how federal government recommendations for the provision of “evidence-based” and “quality assured” curriculum resources are likely to influence national directions for schooling. Engaging Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) framework, we scrutinise how curriculum resource provision is problematised in a key national policy document. This analysis brings to the fore the technocratic policy logics and highlights how these logics are implicit in the privileging of external knowledge actors as authorities in resource provision. This poses questions nationally and internationally about the streamlining of teachers’ curricular practices as a “solution” to complex systemic issues.