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This article explores how recent curricular reform in Australia has been responsive to a culture of redress. It argues that taken together, the 2008 National Apology to the Stolen Generations and the 2010 national curriculum reform marked a turning point, whereby settler colonial injustices have since been systematically included in the curriculum. This is explored through a case study analysis of the two iterations of the Victorian Curriculum: History post-Apology— 2012 and 2016—the latter of which remains in current use. Using discourse analysis methods, this article argues that the inclusion of colonial injustice in the post-Apology era signals a consensus that has emerged around the significance of representing injustice in history curriculum, and by extension, for shaping future citizens. Through close textual analysis of the curriculum documents, this article finds that representations of historical injustice have been organized by four frames: memorialization, equivalence, personalization, and human rights. It argues that these frames curtail opportunities for the development of an understanding of the structural character and effects of settler colonialism, and limit consideration of the longer history of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. These failures raise questions about how impending reforms might respond to the contemporary political context where treaty negotiations and formal truth-telling with First Nations' polities are unfolding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Historical significance continues to be the forgotten element of history education. Without student capacity to establish what they think is important, or why they would care about certain events and people from the past, students will continue to be disinterested in the study of history. This paper draws on the results of a three-year study aimed at understanding how the Stolen Generations in Australia becomes historical significant for pre-service teachers. Rather than being disinterested in stories of the Stolen Generations, we find that these students are vitally invested in such narratives to the extent that they, on occasion, cannot bear to hear the story. While they acquire knowledge, they also resist and ignore it. Hence, we argue that neither reason or cognitive science are up to the task of resisting either the student's drive to ignore, or their assimilation of difference into the same. For history to be significant in the classroom for students, it must be understood as more than an epistemological pursuit. [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]

Existing research on history education's role in agendas of transitional justice is focused on societies undertaking regime change or rebuilding after extensive conflict and often centres disciplinary competencies as part of educational reform objectives to support political transition. However, the orientation towards transitional justice in settler colonial democracies such as Australia has prompted debate about the role of history curriculum in transitional contexts where constructivist, discipline-based approaches are already prescribed. While "historical thinking" in Australia has been a pragmatic middle way between polarised single-narrative and deconstructivist paradigms, this article argues that questions of transitional justice return the subjective, contemporary, and political to history education in ways that challenge the scope of disciplinary meaning-making and complicate the civic promises of disciplinary thinking. By discussing examples of how time is presently imagined and engaged using second-order historical thinking concepts, this article engages some key limitations of disciplinary history curriculum vis-à-vis transitional justice. It suggests alternate approaches that stretch the disciplinary paradigm in new directions that carry important implications for other societies engaged in questions of transitional justice. [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]

In 1954, Hugh Stretton took charge of a threadbare history department at the University of Adelaide. By the end of his tenure as department chair in 1966, staff numbers had increased fivefold and the department was recognised as one of the best of its kind in Australia. Stretton wanted his department to 'teach history interestingly', which was his overriding criterion in making new appointments. He also ran a democratic department that went against prevailing notions of 'God-Professor' departmental governance. As well as highlighting the singular features of the Adelaide department, the present paper places the growth and the character of 'The House that Hugh Built' within wider Australian and global contexts. The 'Stretton era' straddled a period of rapid expansion of the university sector both locally and internationally, which entailed a move from a generalist to a more specialised curriculum, with a greater emphasis on research and publication, and a less male-dominated faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about the purpose and content of history education in schools have been prevalent in most Westernised democratic nations over the last 30 years. Under discussion are essential questions concerning national identity/ies, competing narratives and the aims of history education. The impact of ‘history wars’ has been felt within both Australia and England, as conservative commentators – including politicians and historians – have raised concerns about the depth and effectiveness of history education and have sought to make significant changes to the history curriculum for schools. This analysis examines the history wars in Australia and England, exploring the view that history education has been in danger and/or crisis and examining the curricular implications of a move toward greater recognition of national narratives. It raises some essential tensions that remain regarding two aspects of history teaching in both nations: (1) historiography and (2) chronological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1964, the editor of Sydney University Press, Michael Turnbull, approached G. R. Elton to write the book that became The practice of history (1967). Remarkably, a famous University of Cambridge historian was persuaded to embark on what Turnbull correctly sensed would be an influential and profitable text, and this for an obscure and recently established publishing house located at the other end of the earth. Were it not for Turnbull, The practice of history would probably never have been written. But for Turnbull's editorial advice, a somewhat different book would have resulted. This article traces the close and fruitful working relationship between publisher and author, as well as the adversarial relationship between The practice of history and E. H. Carr's What is history? (1961). It also suggests that Turnbull intended The practice of history as part of a wider publishing purpose where big ideas could be expressed, given a mass audience, and thus contribute to debate and social change. Elton would have found such a socially engaged agenda abhorrent, had he known about it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the role that drawing can play in enabling children and young people to theorize concepts of time. In two, independent Australian research projects, children aged between 5 and 8 years were asked to respond to the question, ‘What might the future be like?’, while 12–14 year olds were asked, ‘What does history look like?’ There are points of connection and convergence in the analysis of the drawings and the ways in which the children articulate their visual representations of temporality to demonstrate deep and philosophical insights. This research illuminates possibilities for both the value of art practices in learning and the capacity for such approaches in schools. It disrupts narrow visions of neoliberal policy that privileges the teaching of literacy and numeracy in schools and seeks to transform children and youth into particular citizens for the future. We argue that expanding our view of the use and value of visual forms of learning and expression can contribute to a more layered and complex understanding of the capacities of children and young people. Further, this research contributes to better understanding of how students navigate challenging local curriculum and school terrain as they are increasingly posited as global citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of Spanish departments in Australian universities can be traced back to the 1960s, when a number of British hispanistas relocated to Australia and created a small number of successful teaching programs that reproduced the British model. A second generation of Spanish scholars arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly from Latin American countries, in a migration wave that is still current. The transition from a British understanding of the Spanish discipline, with a strong focus on (canonical) literary studies, to current curricula that emphasise communicative skills and a loose notion of cultural studies, is symptomatic of deeper changes in the way the discipline has sought to reposition itself in the context of the Modern Languages debate. [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 decision of the Malaysian government to make it compulsory for students to pass History at the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia level in 2012 has attracted a positive response from Malaysian people. General public opinion on making history compulsory seems favourable on all sides of the social and political spectrum, but there remain many questions to be answered regarding the content of the history syllabus. Certain quarters have pushed for a re-evaluation of the syllabus that includes, amongst other things, the history of each Malaysian race and its leaders. This paper provides a comparison of the successes and failures of history education in developed countries including Britain, Australia and Canada, to consider whether Malaysia can learn from their experiences. It also provides an evaluation of Malaysia's history syllabus at Form Five level, particularly in terms of what, should properly constitute Malaysian history, as well as exploring the relevance of history teaching to the country's educational objectives. Finally, it explores problems of teaching history at school level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in many countries, such as Germany, Turkey, the United States and Japan the history/culture wars of the past two decades have increased public interest in what is taught in schools. This has resulted in rigorous debates in the general community, encouraged and sustained through regular media coverage. Partly as a response to this, History has been designated as a separate subject in the first wave of planning and implementation of the Australian National Curriculum. Two of the reasons for this include first, to recognise the importance of teaching historical skills as a distinct subject; and second there is an ongoing bipartisan political interest in privileging history disciplinary knowledge and content to ensure that national history narratives are taught to students. To contribute meaningfully towards the development and implementation of a National Curriculum, it is important to understand past curriculum constructions, so that the disciplinary knowledge and content of history remains independent, and not subsumed within current (or future) political trends. Based on examples of national history from the Queensland Social Studies syllabus and government endorsed sourcebooks in the lead-up to the 1988 Bicentennial of British colonisation of the Australian continent, this article examines the influence and role of multiculturalism in History teaching in primary schools. Particular attention is paid to Indigenous representations and British heritages, as an example of two groups that have often been represented as binaries to each other throughout Australian history. An analysis of the curriculum materials illuminates the differences between multiculturalism and history—highlighting how the two are merged at the expense of accurate historical knowledge and concepts, particularly in the area of national history. This study will demonstrate that as a result of the infiltration of multiculturalism into history content within the Social Studies curriculum, historical knowledge becomes silenced in the school curriculum – resulting in vague and sometimes historically inaccurate information being presented to students; and the privileging of certain types of multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the social life of a denim jacket as an item of apparel, as a museum object and a personal possession. It highlights its intersections with Cambodian and Australian history and shows how it works as a composition and means of composing personal experience. The discussion is located in a cultural approach to oral history and in museum studies discussion about representations of Australian migration history. It is also inspired by the Global Denim research project. A dialogic approach is used to show the interplay between history and lived experience, and public discourse and personal meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on historical thinking has instigated important disciplinary conversations and changes in pedagogical practice. They have, however, largely focused on the primary and secondary school sector, highlighting the gap in corresponding research into tertiary education. It is important to look at the experiences of history students at tertiary level, to assess the impact of perceptions and practices on graduate employment outcomes and transitions to research careers. In 2008 a national scoping study on student and staff perceptions of the nature and purposes of historical thinking was undertaken at 12 Australian universities, involving 1455 student questionnaires and 50 interviews with academics. This article examines student and staff perceptions of the social benefits of historical thinking, highlighting the great potential for transformative learning and civic contribution, and the vital role of agency in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most academic historians in Australia are also teachers. Yet history academics have seldom been as assiduous in researching the traditions of their teaching as they have been in researching their subjects-matter. Prompted by a recent Australian survey of history students and academics, this article draws on new developments in social and educational psychology to suggest ways of overcoming the individualism and passivity of many established traditions of teaching and learning of history in universities. These new ways seek to re-position history learners in the university as researchers who collaborate. The aim is to widen the range of performances history students undertake, helping to make students more active and self-aware in their historical thinking, and enabling them to expect more and more to make knowledge, not just to receive it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Australian political and social history has received little historiographical attention. Political history has been lauded or, more often, dismissed as traditional historical practice, while from the 1960s social history took its place as a catch-all phrase for various “new” histories concerned with everyday life. This article examines the place of political and social history in the nascent Australian academic historical profession of the 1950s to the early 1970s, and then explores the impact of the new social history on academic political history. It will suggest that while there was only limited exchange before the late 1980s, in the last twenty years social history has contributed modestly to a reconstituted understanding of political history as part of lived experience. “[...] I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?” “Yes, I am fond of history.” “I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention [...]”. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2006, Australia's conservative prime minister John Howard convened a history summit in Canberra. The purported goal of the summit was the framing of a nationally-acceptable curriculum in Australian history. However, as this article suggests, Howard's hidden intention was to use the summit as a device for introducing a narrowly traditionalist syllabus that would be personally pleasing to the prime minister. As it happened, Howard's plan encountered resistance from members of the history education community and, after several diversions and alarms, was discarded when the conservative coalition government was defeated in the general election of November 2007. The author was closely involved in these proceedings and this article constitutes a contextualisd memoir of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching national history in school generates significant public anxiety and political debate—as the various 'history wars' around the world reveal. For many school students, however, studying their nation's past is dull and repetitive. Such lack of interest has been confirmed by surveys and research reports that reveal alarmingly low levels of national historical knowledge among young people, and there is growing popular concern that their ignorance of the past endangers the nation's future. Yet preoccupation with students' apparent national illiteracy tends to overlook how they connect with history in the first place. This paper draws on findings from a comparative Australian and Canadian research project that interviewed students and teachers about the ways they learned and taught history. It argues that any return to 'the facts' at the expense of critical historical engagement in class could turn students away from the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The aim of this article is to discuss the roles historical studies can take in the construction of peaceful societies in the future by means of the value and function of historical data. The methods applied for this aim include "peace education" and "historical empathy". Through examination the related publications, peace education is discussed with specific attention payed to types of practices and defined curricula in numerous countries including Australia. It is also suggested that historical empathy can be used for solving historical problems and creating a mutual understanding between societies which are neighbors or share common past while they struggle with the globalization process. Both researchers and student who establish "historical empathy" can develop a different attitude towards the "other" as a basic problem of teaching history by finding new approaches and horizons. In this article, the difficulties encountered in when it comes to the practice of "peace education" and "historical empathy" include a peaceful understanding to individuals, dealing with the concepts like war and antagonism - all discussed in the light of academic views. Basic principals like "permanency" and "reciprocity" are elements of the methods recommended above and are argued for in the article within the scope of the question of whether or not history can serve World peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Facies, provenance and palaeocurrent analysis of the predominantly siliciclastic Neoproterozoic succession of the east Kimberley district of northwestern Australia indicates southwesterly-directed regional palaeoice-flow directions associated with continental glaciation. Facies relationships at three key study sites in the east Kimberley record glacial advance, retreat and marine transgression and the likely effects of ice dynamics on local basin depositional history. Ice-scour linked with provenance data indicate ice advance from the northeast. Additional ice-flow data from the west Kimberley and the Daly River area of Northern Territory are consistent and record a regional palaeoice-flow direction towards the southwest. Palaeocurrent data and facies relationships in the east Kimberley, however, suggest that sediment transport directions within the east Kimberley basin were influenced by a combination of ice-induced lithospheric flexure, pre-existing topography and modification of basin topography and sediment dispersal paths by ice-induced redistribution of debris. A basin evolution model incorporating these concepts within the framework of ice advance, retreat and marine inundation is proposed. Identification of regional ice-flow trends of this scale should ultimately prove a useful tool in testing possible palaeogeographic reconstructions of continent configurations in a post-Rodinian world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers a critical look on the significance of the teaching of history in Australian schools. It emphasizes that the study of history confers intellectual benefits on those who undertake it, if it is treated in a professional fashion. It underscores that there are trends within the historical profession that tend to undermine that professionalism and to replace it with an imperative driven by political and ideological considerations.

This article focuses on the creation of effective podcasts with students. Because podcasts are easy to make, they are said to be a great way to promote technology to reluctant teachers. According to Dave Fagg, an Australian history teacher, rather than spending his time confiscating MP3 players from students, he integrated them into learning by involving students in scripting, recording, editing and sharing podcasts about Australian history.

This paper explores the nexus between epistemic culture and academic conceptions of the generic skill of critical thinking. Although generic skills are seen as being of great importance in higher education, there has been little examination into the ways in which the knowledge culture of each specific discipline influences the academic staff's conception of generic skills. This paper investigates the ways in which critical thinking is understood by academic staff in two related but distinct disciplines, history and economics. It finds that while there are some similarities, critical thinking in economics is defined primarily as the use of economic tools whereas critical thinking in history is described from a range of perspectives. Thus the epistemic culture of the discipline appears to influence conceptions of critical thinking. This has implications for the ways in which generic skills are framed within the broader university community and indeed has implications for policy at both the university and the political level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some of the debates about the nature and purpose of education in the social sciences in the Australian curricula. It examines recent attempts in studies of society and environment and history curricula to prepare students for global citizenship and responds to neo-conservative critiques that our 'politically correct' curricula does not impart the 'truth' about our 'European' heritage. This article argues that while the neo-conservative discourse makes claim to traditional views of knowledge and rationality, its discursive field does not address the broader questions of what sort of education our students require for the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the teaching of history in Australian schools. The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, has expressed concern that history was not being taught as it should in Australia's schools. Howard's comments hinted at a struggle over school history, one that reflected a debate over Australia's past more broadly. If history teaching concentrated on the facts, he reasoned, more Australians would be able to take part in the national sense of belonging. Howard loudly opposed the attempted re-writing of Australian political history by the political opponents.

Offers a strategy for using Australian women's history in a U.S. women's history survey course. Similarities and differences between American and Australian settler societies; Discussion on the gender frontier of settler societies; Relationship between the cult of domesticity and colonialism.

The article presents an interview with historian Ross Fitzgerald. He discussed his paper "Writing Contemporary History in Australia." He also reported how the approach to Australian history writing is changing. He also discussed issues concerning some historic movement in Australia and their impact on history writing.

Many of the best studies of lime have been concerned with the transitions from one temporal order to another, and in particular the origins and the pervasive global impact of:metric time. This focus risks attributing a facticity and durability to capitalist time at the expense of other temporalities. This study counterbalances this problem by exploring the time use and `Dreamtime' of Australian Aborigines, from pre-history, through the British invasion to the present day. Despite the massive disruptions in temporal order, significant continuities are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an Australian perspective on history education research. Response to James F. Voss' article `Issues in the Learning of History'; Decline of history studies in Australia; `How to teach' and `what to teach' issues; Critical importance of the history teacher.