Studies of Society and Environment: What Should Everyone be Learning? What the Northern Territory is Doing in the Compulsory Years T-10Louise Finch, Principal Education Officer, Social Education, Curriculum Branch, NTDE, Darwin. AbstractAs Social Educators, do we have to squeeze the whole world into out teaching? Some of us don't think so. Others get exhausted always adding something new. Neither approach is necessarily the way to go. We need to be more strategic in what we do. Outcomes-based education should help here. Some of us want to develop system and school level outcomes which ask students to identify, describe explain and challenge injustice as well as ecological unsustainable practices and to eventually participate fully in the civic life of their own and the wider community. Others want different outcomes. The Board Approved Course of Study in Social Education T-10, is nearing completion. It now links to the system-level NT Outcomes Profile. A culturally inclusive document, organised into learning sequences all conceptually based and cumulative, it is designed to develop learners' abilities to identify, analyse, construct and communicate social knowledge. Disciplines, themes, activities, topics, skills and student interest are now tools, not curriculum organisers. |
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