As many in the curriculum ‘engine room’ know, curriculum development is a complex collaborative process that is dependent on a range of factors.
Some of those factors include: legislative frameworks of governments, curriculum reviews, policy cycles, inquiry recommendations, political priorities, funding, sources of evidence, community partnerships, education sector capacity and the available and accessed expertise of the developers. All of these make a very real impact on what the children of families across this continent experience each business day when they enter a school and its various learning environments.
Curriculum development from outside the ‘engine room’ can be a difficult space to engage with. Specialist mechanisms and user experiences can change with each batch of syllabus output. There is usually a period of some apprehension for educators and system representatives as consultation phases on draft syllabuses take place and eventually give way to published syllabuses, ready for implementation.
Deep time history does not appear
Scrutiny of the new NSW History 7-10 Syllabus (2024) reveals that, indeed, as Michael Westaway, Bruce Pascoe and Louise Zarmati wrote in the Conversation, the concept of deep time history does not appear.
Efforts by NESA to future-proof syllabus content could likely be one reason (think ‘Big History’) for this decision. Another might be due to evidence from various fields that deep time history is less compatible with some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representations of time as cyclic rather than linear.
Mize (2024) suggests deep time ‘is a colonialist construct that risks both reinforcing white-supremacist epistemologies and occluding non-white ways of relating to the environment’ (pp.143-4).
The claim by authors Westaway, Pascoe and Zarmati that, ‘the only Aboriginal history taught to NSW students would be that which reflects the destruction of traditional Aboriginal society’ quickly gains our attention and invites us to look more closely. In doing so we notice that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures content familiar to Stage 4 history teachers in NSW, has been relocated instead into the new HSIE Kindergarten to Year 6 Syllabus (2024).
Some educators would argue that this relocation may compromise the depth of study for students, while others may welcome the early exposure as a means of normalising learning about Aboriginal cultures and histories.
Compromising depth or early exposure
There are, though, explicit references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ histories and cultures in Stage 4, within Historical context 1(core): The ancient past.
More significant than all of this, is the fact that NESA has in the new NSW History 7-10, Geography 7-10 and Human Society and its Environment (HSIE) K-6 syllabuses, achieved a first in mainstream curriculum history in NSW – and likely in Australia. It embeds Aboriginal Cultures and Histories in the outcomes of the new syllabuses, rather than solely, as in past syllabuses, in content.
This has produced strategically located, high-quality continua of learning about Aboriginal cultures and histories in new NSW history and geography syllabuses from kindergarten to year 10; at once sequential, complementary and avoiding duplication.
What the peak advisory body says
Additionally, NSW AECG Inc. as ‘the peak advisory body regarding Aboriginal Education and Training at both State and Commonwealth levels’ has expressed its support for the new History, Geography and HSIE syllabuses developed by NESA.
Supporting this work, NESA has continued its practice of engaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers to draft Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures in the new syllabuses. This was first introduced in 2016 when new Stage 6 English, Mathematics, Science and History syllabuses were developed.
Targeted consultations
The practice, evidence of NESA’s decolonising of curriculum process, was coupled with targeted consultations with Aboriginal education stakeholders on draft representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. This was for the purpose of cultural quality assurance of content.
Potentially alleviating some of the concerns expressed by Westaway, Pascoe and Zarmati, the new NSW History 7-10 content related to Aboriginal Histories and Cultures is well complemented by the new Geography 7-10 Syllabus, with examples below:
Explain Aboriginal Peoples’ Custodianship, care and management of Country
analyses how Aboriginal Peoples’ Custodianship of Country supports environmental management and enhances Community wellbeing
Curriculum reviews: national and state
Curriculum reviews are enormous investments and are extraordinarily influential. For NSW, there have been two reviews of consequence in recent years.
Firstly, ACARA made its most recent Australian Curriculum (Version 9.0) available in 2022 with flexibility for jurisdictions to implement and/or incorporate in state or territory curriculum. Despite the high quality of the many representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures in Version 9.0 and the potential for ACARA to be international leaders for Truth Telling and Reconciliation, the outcome of the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, appears very uneven across Learning Areas, with the majority optional.
Secondly, in 2020 the NSW Curriculum Review Final Report resulted in procedures being introduced by NESA to progress further curriculum renewal (adopting the term ‘reform’) of the majority of syllabuses from Kindergarten to10.
Disappointingly restrictive
For Aboriginal education stakeholders, Recommendation 5.3 was significant but disappointingly restrictive, containing Aboriginal histories and cultures content to HSIE, ‘Develop a curriculum that specifies what every student should know and understand about Aboriginal cultures and histories, and incorporate this curriculum into Human Society and its Environment’.
This limitation of Recommendation 5.3 was despite the successes of the representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures content across a range of Key Learning Areas beyond HSIE such as in English, Mathematics, Science, Technology, PDHPE and Languages syllabuses developed between 2016 and 2019. If anything, it is the disciplinary limitation inherent in this recommendation that, if acted on, will become a regrettable ‘step backwards in education’ making non-HSIE syllabuses out of step with the increasingly inclusive research produced by higher education that curriculum authorities rely upon for curriculum content.
Shared end-goals of the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges in school curriculum
Among the many tensions for curriculum and assessment authorities, and communities that underpin the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges, skills and understandings in school-based curriculum is the ambiguity surrounding a shared end-goal. While this will be always be a work in progress as Australian history continues to mature around its reconciliation, Truth Telling and reparations negotiations, the question remains, ‘how do curriculum and assessment authorities and communities start to frame an end-goal of representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges in school curriculum?’.
For example, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students comprising 6.5% of Australia’s school student population in 2023 (ABS, 2024) is it a fair ask to anticipate curriculum planning in the future ensures each mainstream syllabus has approximately 6.5% of content reserved for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges? This may seem an outrageous suggestion for some, but it is starting to become a reality in the new NSW HSIE syllabuses.
The measure of success
Ultimately, the measure of success is when all school students across the nation successfully comprehend, value and respectfully utilize knowledges, skills and understandings gained by exposure to culturally and academically rigorous and assessable representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures across subjects in all Key Learning Areas.
Christine Evans is a Wiradjuri woman and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Education) at the University of New South Wales. In her role she contributes to enhancing opportunities for the representation of Indigenous knowledges in curriculum and in professional development using culturally responsive methods. Earlier in her career she was a secondary Visual Arts teacher/head teacher in NSW public and independent schools. Christine held the role of Chief Education Officer, Aboriginal Education, at NESA for several years and, in 2016, introduced a new model for the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures in NSW school curriculum.
The header image comes from the AIATSIS guide to evaluating and selecting education resources
