Heather Sharp

Australia’s 1988 Bicentennial: national history and multiculturalism in the primary school curriculum

As in many countries, such as Germany, Turkey, the United States and Japan the history/culture wars of the past two decades have increased public interest in what is taught in schools. This has resulted in rigorous debates in the general community, encouraged and sustained through regular media coverage. Partly as a response to this, History has been designated as a separate subject in the first wave of planning and implementation of the Australian National Curriculum. Two of the reasons for this include first, to recognise the importance of teaching historical skills as a distinct subject; and second there is an ongoing bipartisan political interest in privileging history disciplinary knowledge and content to ensure that national history narratives are taught to students. To contribute meaningfully towards the development and implementation of a National Curriculum, it is important to understand past curriculum constructions, so that the disciplinary knowledge and content of history remains independent, and not subsumed within current (or future) political trends. Based on examples of national history from the Queensland Social Studies syllabus and government endorsed sourcebooks in the lead-up to the 1988 Bicentennial of British colonisation of the Australian continent, this article examines the influence and role of multiculturalism in History teaching in primary schools. Particular attention is paid to Indigenous representations and British heritages, as an example of two groups that have often been represented as binaries to each other throughout Australian history. An analysis of the curriculum materials illuminates the differences between multiculturalism and history—highlighting how the two are merged at the expense of accurate historical knowledge and concepts, particularly in the area of national history. This study will demonstrate that as a result of the infiltration of multiculturalism into history content within the Social Studies curriculum, historical knowledge becomes silenced in the school curriculum – resulting in vague and sometimes historically inaccurate information being presented to students; and the privileging of certain types of multiculturalism.

Representations of National Identity in Fictionalized History: Children’s Picture Books and World War I

ABSTRACT With the centenary of World War I (WWI) commemorative events taking place, Australia’s involvement in this conflict is popularly seen as inextricably linked to a definitive national identity. Numerous children’s books have been published that represent events from WWI. Eight such picture books, aimed at primary school students and published post-2010, are selected for analysis. This analysis comes at a time when there is significant attention being paid by governments, community organisations, media outlets and the general public to the anniversary of WWI. Therefore, it is timely to analyse representations of this conflict, particularly to understand contemporary representations aimed at children.

Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching and Learning English: Connections with Critical Numeracy

Together with literacy, numeracy has been acknowledged as a foundation of formal schooling. Once considered the domain of the mathematics and English classrooms respectively, numeracy and literacy—in all their forms—are increasingly recognised as important social practices pertinent to all subjects (Luke and Freebody in Practically Prim 4(2):5–8, 1999, Steen in J Singap Assoc Math Educators 6(1):10-16, 2001, Unsworth in Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice. Open University Press, Buckingham, 2001, Watson in Math Teach 69(1):34-40, 2009, Goos, Geiger, & Dole in Changing classroom practice through a rich model of numeracy across the curriculum, 2012). In the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority’s [ACARA] in General Capabilities, (2015b), which lists skills required in order to ‘live and work successfully in the twenty-first century’, literacy and numeracy occupy prominent positions amid the seven general capabilities emphasised across all Key Learning Areas (KLAs). Increasingly, highly developed skills in multiple forms of literacies and numeracies are considered vital for citizens in the knowledge society.

Drama in the Primary Classroom: Contextualising Critical Numeracy

This description of a simple role-play in the primary classroom illustrates the potential for drama to transform the learning environment. An imagined scenario provides a novel context for participation, learners are empowered to share ‘ownership’ of the classroom assuming various roles in the drama and there is a conscious effort to build on learners’ existing knowledge. Although not identified in the description of the role-play, there are a range of numerate concepts, skills and dispositions inherent to the scenario. The spatial arrangement of furniture to replicate the setting of a train carriage, the numbering of the chairs, the allocation of tickets and roles to each learner, and possibly transactions related to the purchasing of food at the dining car, all require numerate skills and knowledge. Further, in participating in the scenario, the learners assume particular social roles. The introduction of drama, therefore, provides a meaningful context for engagement with numeracy.

History and the Importance of Numeracy

As history has only recently become a distinct and compulsory subject from primary school through to Year 10, it is increasingly clear that teachers will need to develop history pedagogical skills and knowledge of historical thinking so that they can effectively teach students. For teachers of primary school students, the need for cross-curricular or multidisciplinary approaches to teaching the quantity of outcomes across multiple syllabuses and curriculum documents continues to be a serious consideration in planning. This chapter sets out to address this by linking the Australian Curriculum to pedagogical approaches teachers can use to identify the numeracy embedded within the subject of history.

After the Ideological Battles: Student Views on Sources Representing the Gallipoli Conflict

Sharp provides an analysis of high school students’ perspectives on representations of Australia’s involvement in the Gallipoli campaign of World War I (WWI), with an emphasis on what they consider to be missing from a selection of mainstream sources. Sharp analyzes the data framed within Peter Seixas’ three History teaching approaches—collective memory, disciplinary, and postmodern. Of interest is whether students reflect common public discourses of the Gallipoli campaign which often mythologize Australia’s participation, approach it from an historian disciplinary specific, or if they incorporate an understanding of the multifaceted nature of this event, through a postmodern understanding of global contexts. Finally, an argument is provided for a world history approach for nationally sensitive and traumatic events especially when the topic is internationally significant.