Three decades ago, Stephen Kemmis (1990) argued that curricula provide insights into how nations and states interpret themselves and how they want to be interpreted. He also noted that 'debates about curriculum reveal fundamental concerns, uncertainties and tensions which preoccupy nations and states as they struggle to adapt to changing…

The three-dimensional design of the Australian Curriculum includes the cross-curriculum priorities (CCPs), learning areas and general capabilities (GCs). Geography teachers are uniquely positioned to address the CCPs through the subject's disciplinary focus on interrelationships between physical features of the earth with individual, social and…

The introduction of the Australian Curriculum in 2011 and 2012 brought with it a variety of responses, from consternation from some states less willing to give up their autonomous curriculum positioning through to significant optimism from educators and academics about the opportunities and benefits afforded by such a national curriculum…

Sustainability is an important cross-curriculum priority in Australian education that is not commonly realised in schools and classrooms. In this article, we discuss the challenges and opportunities to enacting sustainability, suggesting that both top-down (systemic schoolwide leadership and support) and bottom-up (individual educator's…

This paper arises from the Keynote we co-delivered at the 2017 AGTA Conference in Melbourne. In the paper, we outline the main theoretical resources that underpin the GeoCapabilities project (www.geocapabilities.org). This project has sought to engage teachers and teacher educators in geography with the principles of "curriculum…

"Sustainability" is one of the seven major concepts in the geography curriculum. It is also one of the three cross-curriculum priorities in the Australian curriculum, together with Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. This paper describes how the concept is explained…

This paper is partly based on a lecture given at the AGTA conference in Perth in January 2013. It argues for a progressive subject based curriculum in which geography plays an essential part. This is based on an analysis of why and how subjects like geography, as part of the humanities, have been undermined and diminished in recent times. In a way…

The introduction of Geography as a compulsory learning area from Foundation year, such as Kindergarten, to Year 8 in Australia provides new opportunities for learning and teaching. Opportunities, in part, will be driven by challenges associated with the introduction of this learning area. Key challenges are about variability: in take-up of the…