An archive of entries with keywords: "Curriculum"
Australia, 1880-1989
Anxiety concerning the fitness of youth for coming adulthood and its responsibilities has had a long history. Towards the end of the nineteenth century in Australia such anxiety rose to the level of a moral panic. Larrikinism was a problem for the respectable middle classes. The behaviour of too many unruly working class youths, larrikins, tended towards criminality, immorality, disorder and violence of various kinds.… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1901-2020
On 1 January 1901, the Australian federal constitution came into operation and the Australian nation was born. Among its many tasks, as in all federal constitutions, was the enumeration of powers to be divided between the national or Federal government, and the States of the Commonwealth. The Australian Constitution specified the exclusive powers of the Federal government.… Continue Reading »
Victoria, 1960-2005
Alf Salkin (1923-2005) was a teacher in Victorian Education Department secondary schools from 1964 until 1985. He taught at Mount Waverley, Monash and Brentwood high schools. He was primarily an art teacher but late in his career he also taught science. His contributions to environmental education were extensive and stretched well beyond school teaching.… Continue Reading »
Victoria, 1863-1866
Mary Mackillop is the only Australian to be deemed a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. She has been widely recognised for her involvement in education; particularly her work with schools conducted by a religious order she co-founded with the Rev. Julian Woods in 1866: the Institute of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1840-1870
The best way of teaching reading and writing has been a contentious question for at least two centuries. Phonics first approaches, building reading skills from the progressive recognition of letters, syllables, words, phrases and sounds has a long history, as do meaning-centred approaches that attempt to contextualise words, phrases and sentences within accessible stories and other contexts.… Continue Reading »
Eastern Australia, 1840-1870
The idea that colonial governments might foster and fund schools detached from church governance belongs to the 1830s. By then, with the religious diversity of the colonies, it was beginning to seem impossible that the Church of England could by itself provide a dominant ‘public’ school system. There were too many Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Congregationalists and more for easy acceptance of such a position.… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1830-1920
The film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) based on Joan Lindsay’s novel of the same name (1967) portrayed life in a rural Australian ladies’ academy of the late nineteenth century. It was largely responsible for popularly imagined representations of such schools. The private ladies’ academies and colleges provided for the education of girls and young women through the accomplishments curriculum.… Continue Reading »
South Australia, 1850-1880
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England was not so glorious for those Christian groupings, puritan and dissenting (also “nonconformist”), that had developed or were developing organizational, cultural and theological traditions separate from the established Church of England. The restoration of the monarchy saw a consolidation of the privileges of the Church of England.… Continue Reading »
Australia, to 2022
Contributions to Anita Heiss’ anthology, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, included authors’ recollections of their experiences of schools. Shannon Foster recalled that ‘None of the teachers at school ever talked about Aboriginal people. “They” were never mentioned.’ (Foster in Heiss, 2018) For Evelyn Araluen, being ‘Aboriginal meant I was always angry in History class.’ (Aruluen in Heiss) John Hartley remembered in third grade
being told I was not Aboriginal, because I was not black.… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1888-2010
Home economics is a curriculum domain that has been highly responsive to social pressures concerning gender, especially the expected roles that girls and women should occupy in families, the labour market and society more broadly. It is a curriculum domain that came into being towards the end of the nineteenth century as an educational response to several interdependent crises and social movements that included the following:
Fig 1: Slums of Melbourne, 1930s.
… Continue Reading »