Abstract:
The term 'meta-curriculum' refers to what is learned from learning the school curriculum. The paper outlines and illustrates the development of the idea and method and reports the findings of a recent ARC funded project. It is argued that high level factual generalisations (such as 'texts can be read in different ways') integrate different kinds of knowledge and are more useful and enduring than particular facts from which the generalisation may have been learned (such as the details of the differences between two different readings of a particular book). It is also suggested that factual generalisations are easily taught and could form the basis of any curriculum.