Image above: The Australian Curriculum: Geography on the ACARA site - at last!!.
Links to look at related to this blog
Spatialworlds blog
Spatialworlds website
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
ACARA website
ACARA Australian Curriculum portal
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au
A green light for implementation
After 4 years and 6 months of meetings, advisory groups, writing panels, draft documents, consultation periods, teacher forums and robust discussions, the Australian Curriculum: Geography is published. On Friday, 10 May 2013 the Ministers of Education met and signed-off on the final document and on the 20 May 2013 the geography curriculum went live on the ACARA site.
The Australian Geography Teachers Association (AGTA) and geography teachers in Australia started working towards the creation of the curriculum when AGTA, the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland (RGSQ) established the 'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project way back in October 2008. Since then there has been 4 advisory panels and over 10 writers who have crafted the many iterations of the curriculum leading to this final document. The publication of the curriculum is a very important day for geography in Australia because for the first time we have a geography curriculum for all of Australia - a 21st Century curriculum deserving plaudits as a world class geography curriculum. To view the curriculum go to the ACARA Australian Curriculum Portal at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Geography/Rationale. The published on-line curriculum can be filtered and downloaded as required.
The next important event is the publication on 30 May of the ESA resources (GeogSpace) to support the Australian Curriculum: Geography. As mentioned in a previous Spatialworlds posting, the GeogSpace resource has been developed by AGTA and will be on-line as a standalone website called GeogSpace. We expect this resource to go live by the end of May and be the perfect support for classroom teachers engaging with the new geography Curriculum. More on that when it is launched. In the meantime keep an eye out for the GeogSpace link coming alive (http://www.geogspace.edu.au)
So at last the planets are lining up for the implementation of a national geography Curriculum. The next step is for geography teachers around Australia to offer professional learning for our teaching colleagues who are not geographers and require support in teaching this new discipline based conceptual geography curriculum - to help these teachers to think geographically. It is an exciting time for geography in Australia schools.
To get the ball rolling I conducted a workshop for DECD implementation officers on Wednesday 22 May at Thebarton Senior College.
Click here to download an edited version of last night's presentation.
