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This article traces the convergence of state redress and the educational construction of citizenship from the 1990s onwards in Australia. It examines how successive settler political leaders used the education of a historical consciousness—settler citizens' relation to past, present and future—as a core strategy to seek resolution to the problematic national past. The article examines key political speeches that sought to mediate the settler nation's past in light of growing international and domestic pressures, including Keating's 1992 Redfern Park speech and Rudd's 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations, and one of conservative backlash: Howard's 1996 Menzies Lecture. Rudd's subsequent national policy agenda of apology and an Australian Curriculum sought to inaugurate a new era in the settler nation's history. That program was embodied by the figure of the future citizen positioned to reckon with the nation's unjust past, a task inscribed in the inaugural national history curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Intercultural understanding' (ICU) and its core concept 'interculturality', was introduced in the new national curriculum, implemented across Australia from 2013 (Australian Curriculum, ACARA. [2013]. Australian curriculum V.60. Retrieved from ). This paper draws on a study conducted in Victoria, Australia, which asked: how history teachers conceptualise interculturality for history teaching and learning? The study used two methods to gather data: textual analysis and focus group interviews. This paper only reports on specific findings from the focus group interviews, analysed through a methodology of crystallisation and discourse analysis, framed by four modes of historical thinking; traditional, exemplary, critical and transformative. The paper argues that interculturality is a significant challenge to history education often located in discourses constructed over time which disrupt how things have always been taught. By analysing the teachers' talk through a lens whereby the construction of language reveals the educational problematic, the research looks for a way in for interculturality into history teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History is a key site for the negotiation of national identity, with the ability to define the past shaping the national narrative on who "we" were, who "we" are, and, crucially, who "we" should be. As such, the teaching of history is a site of intense political debate. This paper examines the history module of the Australian Curriculum to understand the extent to which the history curriculum moves beyond Eurocentric, colonial imaginings of Australia's history towards a more inclusive, multi‐cultural, globally‐oriented, cosmopolitan vision of society. Both the curriculum and teaching resources were examined to ascertain the identities and orientations these materials could provide. The research finds that — despite improvements in presenting a diversity of representations, in particular a positive focus on the rights and contributions of Indigenous peoples in Australia and some orientation to diverse migrant histories, the environment, and Asia — the main thrust of the curriculum is a focus on the nation‐state at the expense of global engagement. The funnel structure which deals with broader world history in earlier years, relegates the rest of the world to a temporal and spatial distance, leaving a somewhat myopic narrative that perpetuates traditional, Anglo‐centric narratives, maintaining the perspectives of "Others" as peripheral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the case for a greater focus on the teaching of local histories in the Australian Curriculum: History. It takes as its starting point an Indigenous epistemology that understands knowledge to be embedded in the land. This connection between knowledge and country is used to examine recent literature on whether the teaching of history in schools can succeed in the context of the new Australian history curriculum. Various proposals from academics to develop a framework that can be used to select appropriate content and approaches to teaching history in Australia are explored. It questions whether a geographically dispersed and diverse body of students can ever be engaged with knowledge that is often taught far from the place of its making. This article eschews the traditional concepts used by historians to teach and interpret history, in order to observe how the country can teach the student. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the preparation of pre-service teachers for the Australian curriculum. Among the topics discussed include History Wars and the proposed National History Curriculum in the classroom content and its teaching methods, examination of Australian state curricula and comparative curricular studies, and implementation of the National Curriculum: History.

The author applauses the move of the Australian Parliament to include the chronicles of Stolen Generations in the country's National History Curriculum. He stresses that it is essential for students to know the history of Stolen Generations from Torres Strait Islander community to shape their future. He states that the release of new history of curriculum provides a great opportunity for historical re-examination and reconfiguration, particularly where Indigenous Australian histories are concerned. The author narrates a story of a Victorian family who experienced the hardship of the children being separated from their parents. He proposes that story-telling is an effective methodology in teaching the accounts of Stolen Generations in schools.

The author examines the national curriculum for history proposed by the Australian Government in comparison to the national programmes introduced in England, South Africa, New Zealand, and Michigan state in the U.S. He notes that the Key Stage 1 curriculum for 6-7 year-old students in England includes sections on biographies of significant historical figures such as Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale. Upon comparison, the author found that there is an embedded implication that the teaching of history will be taken very seriously in Australian schools. He added that there is a very promising set of proposals for an Australian curriculum for the study and teaching of history.

History has long been taught in Australian schools with a view to encouraging patriotic citizenship. What has been taught and what is meant by patriotic Australian citizenship has changed markedly over the years. Current national initiatives to stimulate and direct the teaching of ‘what we all know’ to be Australian history may not meet the requirements of acceptable educational practice. The Commonwealth government may be better advised to pursue initiatives that encourage understanding of and commitment to the common weal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]