Learning across the curriculum

Learning across the curriculum content, including the cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities, assists students to achieve the broad learning outcomes defined in the NESA Statement of Equity Principles, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (December 2008) and in the Australian Government’s Core Skills for Work Developmental Framework (2013).

Cross-curriculum priorities enable students to develop understanding about and address the contemporary issues they face.

The cross-curriculum priorities are:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
• Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia
• Sustainability

General capabilities encompass the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours to assist students to live and work successfully in the 21st century.

The general capabilities are:

• Critical and creative thinking
• Ethical understanding
• Information and communication technology capability
• Intercultural understanding
• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Personal and social capability

The NESA syllabuses include other areas identified as important learning for all students:

• Civics and citizenship
• Difference and diversity
• Work and enterprise

Learning across the curriculum content is incorporated, and identified by icons, in the content of the History Extension in the following ways.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures includes the study of oral history and communication as a type of history. History Extension provides an opportunity to investigate the responses of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to non-Aboriginal people on the frontier in Australia.

When planning and programming content relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures teachers are encouraged to:

• involve local Aboriginal communities and/or appropriate knowledge holders in determining suitable resources, or to use Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authored or endorsed publications
• read the Principles and Protocols relating to teaching and learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures and the involvement of local Aboriginal communities.

Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia

Students are provided with opportunities to recognise the diversity within the countries of the Asia region through investigations relating to the influence of Genghis Khan, the causes and impact of the Opium Wars, the impact of Western imperialism in Asia, and the partition of India. This enables students to appreciate the events and developments that have shaped the historical perspectives of nations in Asia.

Sustainability

History Extension provides an opportunity to investigate sustainability through the study of environmental history as a type of history. The differing impact upon, uses of and attitudes towards the environment have had direct consequences for peoples over time and across places.

Critical and creative thinking

Critical and creative thinking is integral to the study of historiography. There are opportunities for students to develop sophisticated judgements about complex problems and issues associated with the construction of history. In History Extension, there is the opportunity for students to design their own historical inquiry. This allows students to pose precise questions, interrogate, select and cross-reference sources and develop interpretations based on an assessment of how historians approach history. Students construct and defend a position, and analyse, evaluate and synthesise differing historical interpretations.

Ethical understanding

In History Extension, ethical understanding provides opportunities for students to explore and understand the diverse perspectives and contexts that have shaped historical debates. Students have opportunities to explore the values, beliefs and principles that were the basis for the judgements and philosophies of historians over time. Students have the opportunity to explore the ethical implications of the use and misuse of history over time.

Information and communication technology capability

Information and communication technology (ICT) capability is important in the study of History Extension, particularly in relation to historical investigation and understanding the changing forms of historical communication in the 21st century. Students use digital tools and strategies to locate, access, process and analyse information for the purpose of conducting an independent historical investigation. Students have the opportunity to study how some historians use digital tools and media as forms of historical communication. They can develop an understanding of the issues involved in the use of ICT, including practising ethical scholarship when conducting their historical investigation.

Intercultural understanding

Intercultural understanding is a vital part of learning about historiography. In History Extension, students acquire an understanding of culturally diverse perspectives and learn how these can shape historical interpretations over time. They explore different perspectives, the contexts for those perspectives and how they inform historical debates.

Literacy

Literacy is of fundamental importance to the study of historiography. In History Extension, students explore issues associated with the nature of history and its construction by accessing the works of historians and others who construct history. These works are communicated in a variety of forms including print, oral, visual and digital. They have opportunities to learn to interpret and extrapolate meaning from a range of sources. Students have the opportunity to create complex texts and to discuss, explain and evaluate historiographical issues. They can learn to monitor their own language use for clarity and conciseness, and how to use language to articulate a position.

Numeracy

History Extension provides opportunities to develop numeracy capability through the process of historical inquiry, allowing students to recognise patterns and relationships chronologically and spatially. Students have opportunities to support their views with data, some of which may be numerical in nature.

Personal and social capability

Personal and social capability skills are developed and practised in History Extension, particularly when undertaking the History Project. Students have opportunities to work collaboratively and independently, and develop advanced research and communication skills to justify their views to others.

Civics and citizenship

Students’ understanding of civics and citizenship is enhanced in History Extension through the opportunity to investigate the historical experiences and struggles of Indigenous peoples in South America, Europe or Asia, and of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia.

Difference and diversity

Through History Extension students have the opportunity to investigate how the marginalisation of groups, because of their gender, race and socioeconomic status gave rise to different schools of historical interpretation. Students also have the opportunity to investigate the impact of imperialism and colonisation on diverse societies over time.

Work and enterprise

In History Extension students have the opportunity to investigate how the changing social and economic contexts of people of the past gave rise to different schools of historical interpretation.