The Journal of The Korean Association of Geographic and Environmental Education ISSN:1226-511X(Print) 2586-5641(Online) 한국지리환경교육학회지

This study examines the characteristics and implications of recent changes in Australia’s elementary social studies curriculum (HASS F-6), especially the geography curriculum. Recently (2022), Australia’s national curriculum and social studies curriculum showed changes in aims, names of strands and sub-strands, and concepts of disciplinary thinking and interdisciplinary thinking. In particular, the emphasis on disciplinary knowledge and thinking concepts, and the refining and elaboration of the content of the achievement standards are notable features. In the case of the elementary geography curriculum, the ‘knowledge and understanding’ and ‘skills’ strands serve as the basic framework and central axis of content composition, while history, geography, civics, and economics each have their own domain names and achievement standards. These four domains are organized in a sequential overlapping methode, with history, geography, civics, and economics being incorporated as the grades progress. In terms of content selection and organization, seven major topics are selected and organized by grade, and all major topic names are combined with spatial and temporal scales, so both serve as the essence of composing learning content and scope. Major topics are arranged by grade in a horizon-expanding manner. In terms of knowledge and understanding strand, the topic of geography is basically region-centered, but also shows a combination of topic-centered content in middle grades (Y4) and above. In terms of skill strands, geography learning activities are organized so that there is clear differentiation and sequencing in the level of learner behavior and types of material use as the grades progress. Australia’s primary geography curriculum provides us with implications such as sequential overlapping of domains, integration of content through a single major topic for each grade and explicit spatial scale for each major topic, sequencing of behavoir and material levels by skills according to grade, and geographic elaboration of achievement standards.