Luke Beck

The form of curriculum documents plays a crucial yet often overlooked role in shaping teacher professional practice and educational outcomes. While curriculum content has been widely studied, less attention has been paid to how formal elements, such as structure, taxonomies, and definitions, mediate teaching. In this article, we examine the concept of curriculum form, review prior work on the issue and explore reasons for its neglect. We argue for the value of using Systemic Functional Linguistics in curriculum texts analysis to advance research on curriculum form. We demonstrate the utility of this approach with an analysis of a contemporary curriculum document, the Queensland Japanese Senior Syllabus (QCAA. (2024). Japanese 2025 v1.2 general senior syllabus. Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority. https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/downloads/senior-qce/syllabuses/snr_japanese_25_syll.pdf), and show how networks of intertextual links constrain curriculum interpretation, how interpersonal language resources are linked to accountability practices, and how language choices in the text can shift the locus of curriculum control in the direction of teacher professionalism or central prescription.