It was decided that the content of the curriculum is the knowledge, skills and concepts. Moreover, it can be strongly argued that the concepts are fundamental to the successful application of the knowledge and skills. This chapter explores the concepts within the HASS learning area and why they are so important for quality learning; that is, what is the role of the concepts in developing learners’ critical and creative thinking in the subject disciplines of History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship and Economics and Business? These Humanities subjects are known as the sub-strands of the knowledge and understanding strand in the Australian Curriculum: HASS (v.9.0). Regardless of the nomenclature of the disciples in question, if we intend to develop higher-order critical and creative thinking in the HASS learning environment, it is fundamental that learners understand HASS concepts.

This chapter introduces you to Civics and Citizenship, one of the four subjects that comprise the Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) learning area. It presents Civics and Citizenship as an active, participatory subject area that requires educators to promote an open and supportive educational environment through which learners can be engaged in discussing issues that affect them and their communities, and enables them to engage in democratic decision-making processes. The chapter covers the main elements of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship, as it appears both within the combined HASS curriculum for the primary years and as a stand-alone subject for Year 7. It also introduces methods and approaches through which Civics and Citizenship can be taught effectively. Throughout the chapter, key points are supported by research evidence, and supporting tasks and reflections will help you to develop your understanding of Civics and Citizenship.

Through HASS, children critically consider the moral challenges of our time and make informed and ethical decisions. The rationale to the HASS F–6 (v.9.0) curriculum asserts that HASS empowers students ‘to value their belonging and contribution to their community and beyond’. By engaging with key topics, children can impact their surroundings and effect change. Children explore historical and geographical concepts of significance, continuity and change, and place and space before they even reach school. Upon entering school, further intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts are developed and refined. Thus, early in young people’s lives, teachers aim to introduce children to the study of humanities, which helps us to understand who we are, our identity and human interaction. This chapter explores the nature of HASS learning and pedagogy in the early childhood and primary years; considers the policy basis for teaching social science knowledge and skills; and outlines how play-based and inquiry-based pedagogical approaches can be used to teach HASS; and the value of learning propositional knowledge in the humanities and the significance of maintaining the integrity of discipline-based ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ to deliver a deeper understanding of HASS topics and concepts.

Early childhood teachers in Australia are qualified to teach children from birth to five years of age or birth through to eight years of age depending on their teacher education program and state qualifications. A significant challenge is the need to be knowledgeable about, and comfortable working with, different curriculum framework documents. Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF v2.0) informs practice in early education and care settings for children from birth to age 6, while the Australian Curriculum models the curriculum in the Foundation to Year 10 (hereafter: F–10) formal schooling years. This chapter will provide a contextual foundation for teaching and learning in HASS, beginning with a broad discussion of the Australian Curriculum: HASS in the early years of primary schooling, considered through the lens of the EYLF v2.0. Similarities and differences between the two curriculum documents will then be addressed, as well as how these documents potentially affect children’s learning and how educators teach. Finally, it will be argued that pedagogical practice, specifically inquiry-based learning rather than content-based learning, contributes to effective connections between the foundations for learning developed in the early years settings and transition to the first years of formal schooling.

In aspiring for world-class education, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration provided guidance for the continued development of the Australian Curriculum. The declaration committed the Australian Government, in collaboration with the education community, support for all young Australians development in becoming confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners and active and informed members of the community. To do so, schools are encouraged to address not only academic achievement but also their holistic development and wellbeing. Subsequently, some of the approaches to achieving these goals are identified as not solely fitting into the traditional content learning areas. Rather, it was argued that such approaches needed to be immersed across learning areas to ensure the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians were respected and treated as part of the teaching and learning requirements and as a student entitlement. Hence, the general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities are additional dimensions embedded across learning areas and purported to be of equal importance.

This chapter will initially help your familiarisation with the architecture of HASS in the Australian Curriculum and provide guidance for its implementation in the educational setting. Providing real-life experiences using interdisciplinary skills and knowledge is important; therefore, we will discuss different approaches to planning before highlighting the significance of employing an integrated approach. Discussions of planning and assessment will feature prominently, complemented with illustrations of curriculum resources. While the focus in this chapter is on the Australian Curriculum, the significance of planning HASS learning experiences that build on the EYLF are integrated throughout, drawing on the description of the EYLF that was presented in Chapter 1. It is important to recognise the central role of early years educators in promoting a passion for HASS and acquiring the skills and concepts.

Imagine a world where youth enter K-12 classrooms where critical consciousness, curiosity, and deep joy in learning are cultivated; have access to engaging, abolitionist-oriented, relevant curriculum and assessment systems that support their development as critical and creative thinkers and doers; and who have opportunities to embrace their own and others’ social, emotional, and identity development in brave spaces for the purpose of collaboratively tackling our most pressing personal, community, and world challenges. Imagine what could happen if students had access to teachers who not only stay in teaching in order to support student growth and achievement, but who are fiercely committed to deep flourishing for all youth, especially those who have had to bear the emotional and physical burdens of historical and contemporary racism, violence, and oppressive systems in schooling that mirror larger society; who “go for broke,” (Baldwin, 1963) even early in their careers in order to do what is right/just for youth; and who are effective, well, and thriving themselves.

The literature on school maladjustment is too much engaged with its explicit expressions (e.g., school dropout), while only partially discussing its more implicit expressions. It is arguable that school maladjustment can have many faces. A student’s selection of the way to express maladjustment is a derivation of the person’s characteristics, the environmental characteristics, and the broader context within which the person adjusts (e.g., wartime). Thus, the discussion has to address four general aspects of school maladjustment: (a) silent expressions of school maladjustment, the ones that are commonly addressed by researchers and especially by school teams and parents; (b) indicative expressions of school maladjustment, which are the buds of maladjustment and of major importance in the context of students’ educational flourishing; (c) how both the indicative and the silent expressions can be integrated into a flowchart that summarizes the process of sinking into school maladjustment; and (d) vulnerability to school maladjustment as an additional aspect that deserves a different type of preventive intervention: that is, an intervention that addresses the students’ future adjustment to transitions (e.g., from elementary school to middle school)

This part of the handbook addresses community school partnerships as a vehicle for bringing together a variety of agencies to support students and families. Since their inception, community schools have served to interrupt cycles of inequity experienced by the most vulnerable and underserved student populations. They are intentionally designed to provide all students access to equitable learning opportunities, regardless of their life circumstances or obstacles associated with living in marginalized communities. The significant role community schools play was articulated by the Community Schools Forward project which offers the following definition: “The Community Schools strategy transforms a school into a place where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning and healthy development” (Community Schools Forward, 2023, para.1). With this definition in mind, authors framed their discussions around the ways in which SUPs engage with community schools to leverage both school and community resources and strengthen educational systems.

In these troubled times for our education system, we believe that school–university partnerships can provide shining examples to help alleviate these identified issues as well as meeting – and exceeding – policy discourse. This chapter provides embodied examples from four diverse school–university partnerships in Australia that showcase contextually sensitive resolutions to these identified problems. The cases demonstrate how school–university partnerships can enhance experiences for pre-service teachers, promote meaningful and relevant professional learning throughout a teacher’s career, deeply engage teachers and teacher educators in research and evidence-based practice, and encourage collaborative practices within and between institutions. Through these cases, connections between school-university partnerships and the recommendations from the QITE Report are explored in this chapter. School–university partnerships have far-reaching opportunities and implications for the teaching profession and can (and should) be an integral element of educational reform – not just for initial teacher education, but for the teaching profession as a whole.

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) call to “turn teacher education upside down” was a catalyst in teacher candidate preparation to center clinical experiences and increase collaboration between schools and universities (NCATE, 2010). We argue that clinical practice can do more than prepare quality teachers; it has the potential to transform the systems of education that comprise the School–University partnership. In answering the question, what is the function of teacher candidate supervision in creating and sustaining School–University partnerships, we offer a reconceptualization of supervision as praxis, taking a knowledge-of-practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) approach supervision. To actualize this approach, supervisors of candidates must develop inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) and support the development of an inquiry stance within the candidates, mentors, and other supervisors. Teacher candidate supervision could generate a simultaneous renewal of P-12 schools and institutions of higher education in School–University partnerships if actualized as praxis.

Grounded in the belief that teachers are central to the task of educating young people, the chapters in this part posit that the improvement of any system of education will necessitate attention to the role, position, and training of teachers. Though emanating from a unified position, the chapters in this part offer a variety of lenses through which it is possible to view the work of teaching and learning to teach within partnership settings.

The first two chapters in this part focus on the preparation of future teachers with an explicit emphasis on developing teachers who are connected to the communities they serve and committed to a stance of social justice and equity. Cross and colleagues use a critical lens to explore the foundations and evolution of teacher residencies as a form of teacher preparation. Their chapter summarizes four reports about teacher residencies published between 2008 and 2022 and exposes the underlying structures that contributed to some teacher residencies perpetuating the very inequities they were designed to alleviate. This emphasis on critical pedagogies and justice-oriented education highlights the importance of classroom teaching that is progressing towards equity, contextually grounded, and responsive to the local community.