Questioning elaborations in the Australian Curriculum: Science, History & Geography

· by · in Australian Curriculum, inquiry learning, questioning frameworks. ·

I have prepared this post for a professional development seminar I’m presenting for teachers on inquiry and information literacy in the Australian Curriculum. Here I have created word clouds (in Tagul) of the content elaborations related to posing questions the the subject areas of Science, History and Geography. The visualisation demonstrates the strong sense of disciplinarily and topic areas that are not necessarily evident in the content descriptors alone.

The images maybe useful for teachers who are developing an integrated curriculum, as the visualisations help in analysing the similarities and differences between the subject areas in the same year groups.  They also illuminate where there is more detail at a particular year level, for instance compare Year 7 History which provides topic examples with Year 9 History which seems more generic in nature. The generic versus rich description is also seen in a comparison of  Year 7 Science, History and Geography. Year 7 Science is generic and process-oriented whereas History and Geography have a strong sense of the discipline and topic areas.

Science questioning: Foundation-Year 9

History questioning: Foundation-Year 9

Geography questioning: Foundation-Year 9

2 responses to “Questioning elaborations in the Australian Curriculum: Science, History & Geography”

  2. Thank you for these Mandy. They will be most useful in the visual understanding of teachers about those questioning aspects of Science and Geography. I have found it most useful for young teachers just getting used to all the aspects of curriculums…as well as other teachers wanting ti grasp the concepts of the content.

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