Secondary Geography and the Australian Curriculum – directions in school implementation: a comparative study

ABSTRACT

At first glance, the introduction of a national curriculum for Australian schools suggested a new era of revival for school geography. Since the late 1980s, the development and introduction of more integrated conceptions of curriculum design and implementation has seen the decline of Geography as a distinct subject in Australian schools, with statewide guidelines or frameworks that promoted the integration of Geography along with History into Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE). The approval of the Australian Curriculum: Geography design in late 2013, therefore, offered some degree of optimism that Geography would be revived as a distinctive area of learning in the secondary environment.

Utilising a qualitative comparative case study of three Victorian secondary schools, this paper argues that the hopes of renewal engendered by the institution of an agreed national Geography curriculum have been confronted by the reality of school curriculum and governance processes, in which existing local staff structures and priorities are more of an imperative in school-based Geography curriculum decision-making than policy-driven curriculum change.

KEYWORDS:

• Geography curriculum
• secondary schools
• Australian Curriculum
• leadership
• curriculum development
• geography teaching

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Principals and staff of the Humanities Faculties at Bayside, Northways and PeriUrban for their co-operation in conducting the research for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.