Economics is the study of decisions made when allocating scarce resources to satisfy needs and unlimited wants and business is the enterprise engaged in the production of goods and services, usually for profit. Australia needs innovative individuals with a knowledge and understanding of economics and business who question, process and analyse information, make informed decisions and then reflect upon outcomes. With the end of the mining boom, decreases in manufacturing due to offshoring of labour and the depletion of Tier-1 mines, innovation and entrepreneurship are necessary for a prosperous Australian economy in the future. This chapter will: outline where Economics and Business appears in the Australian Curriculum; provide information on delivery and assessment of Economics and Business knowledge and understanding with illustrations of integration with other learning areas; integrate Economics and Business with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and perspectives and Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia; and then explain how Economics and Business inquiry and skills are delivered through the creation and implementation of a business plan.

All young people have rich histories, connections to space, place and significant events, which fuel their curiosity about the world in which they live and provide an excellent platform from which powerful HASS learning experiences can be developed. The HASS curriculum, as presented in the Australian Curriculum, provides flexibility for educators to link learning to young people’s lifeworlds and experiences through culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogies. This chapter challenges you to place learners and contexts at the centre of planning, using co-design principles that value young people’s voice, histories, capabilities and connections with people and place in HASS planning, teaching and assessment. All educational settings are enriched with a diversity of learners, who need to be involved in learning designs from the outset, rather than having their diverse needs planned for after the event. Such universal design approaches to learning need to be embedded from the early years of education.

Young people are learning in a digitally connected world where rapid advancements in technology are impacting the way people communicate and live their lives. Technology is changing the way learners access, apply and demonstrate their learning. HASS educators need to embrace this learning context and understand that the world young people are learning about, and learning in, is a globally connected and highly technological one. The impact of technology on learning and educator practice has been widely researched and recognised in education circles. Education technology refers to the tools learners have available to support learning. This includes information technology, software and other digital tools, hardware tools, social media and communication devices. It is clear that although technology has the potential to positively change the way young people learn, the role of the educator is crucial in ensuring that technology is used in ways that improve learning outcomes. The SAMR model is a well-researched and widely accepted framework for supporting educators to embed technologies into teaching and learning.

This chapter will introduce global education. While global education is not a subject in its own right in Australian educational settings, developing learners’ understanding of globalisation and supporting them to become and be informed, responsible and active global citizens is an aim that sits across the Australian Curriculum. In this chapter, we engage with what globalisation means, as well as the ways in which learners in different educational settings learn about, and for, globally oriented citizenship. The chapter has three main sections. In the first, we set out what is meant by the terms globalisation and global education, and introduce the concept of the globally oriented citizen. In the second, we set out the key building blocks of global education – concepts, knowledge and understandings, skills and processes and attributes. In the third, we explore pedagogical approaches to global education, as well as how global education connects to the curriculum from the early years to Year 10. We also consider how connections can be made across the various learning experiences that constitute global education.

History is challenging for learners as it concerns something that no longer exists – the past. Yet, as Christopher Portal reminds us, ‘in another sense, of course, the past is not dead at all; it exists through the ways in which we understand the past, and in the personal, cultural and intellectual inheritance we each have’. Our connections with the past can vary from engaging with family members’ recollections, photographs and memorabilia to viewing historical dramas on television and mobile devices. Reading historical fiction, visiting museums or observing a public commemoration such as an Anzac Day march or a National Sorry Day event can also prompt interest in finding out more about the past. This chapter draws from research to consider how teaching and learning in History in the sub-strand of the Australian Curriculum: HASS F–6 v9.0 can enable young people to investigate the traces of the past in authentic and meaningful ways. Making sense of the past, and learning how to think critically about it, empowers young people to relate history to their lives in the 21st century and better prepares them to be informed, confident and active citizens.

Building sustainable futures through education requires us to understand the world through a transdisciplinary curriculum that addresses pressing global concerns in a consumerist society. The most important challenge for educating for sustainability (EfS) in schools and the community is having its transdisciplinary nature understood and valued. This chapter starts by describing the need for humans to shift the way they live towards greater sustainability, followed by an overview of why it is important to connect learners to the natural world, and particularly the place where they live. We use a set of guiding principles informed by a transdisciplinary approach in science education where EfS has strong connections to the cross-curriculum priorities of Sustainability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. The chapter concludes by sharing practical suggestions for preservice and early career educators.

Assessment is a fundamental part of the design process of teaching and learning. Educators knowing and understanding their own beliefs and values about the professional work they do in assessment is crucial to learner success and progress. Being able and willing to write quality assessment tasks, to collect the evidence of student learning and to moderate this evidence with colleagues are all part of the science and art of being a professional in education. Assessment enables the educator to understand what students have learnt and determine what they will learn next. It allows educators to set goals for improvement, design the learning program in collaboration with learners beginning with the end in mind, and monitor progress. Educators are continually assessing and this chapter endeavours to make sense of this important professional skill, which impacts on teaching and learning. To illustrate these ideas and skills in relation to Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), examples from the Australian Curriculum: HASS will be used.

The Asia region (including the Indo-Pacific region) is critically important for Australia’s long-term future as people-to-people links through education and cultural exchange, migration, business, trade, defence and tourism continue to expand and Australia’s relationship with the countries of the region evolves. Referred to as the ‘Asia priority’, the Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia cross-curriculum priority provides opportunities for learners to investigate, understand and recognise the diversity within and between the peoples and countries of the Asia region as well as the diversity within communities in Australia. Referred to as ‘Asia literacy’, and more recently as ‘Asia capability’, this combination of knowledge, understanding and skills prepares learners for the challenges of living, studying and working in the region and in global contexts. This chapter offers strategies for teaching and learning about and from the diverse peoples and cultures of the region in ways that go beyond the instrumentalism of national economic and security interests in Asia. Learners can be encouraged to recognise commonalities and differences as well as appreciate and empathise with the lived experiences of diverse peoples and local communities in Asia and in Australia.

This chapter argues that much of the complexity and rigour of Geography revolves around the sophisticated conceptualisation that is involved in thinking geographically, something that begins to develop in preschool. It is not so much what the geographer studies but the way they look at the human or physical phenomena they are exploring that makes the study of Geography what it is. This leads some to say that everything can be studied geographically or everything is geography! Going back to the discussion on the ‘grammar’ of a subject, we can again highlight that what many people perceive as geography is purely the vocabulary of the subject and what makes geography is the grammar of the subject; that is, it is the implicit conceptual thinking involved when exploring and trying to make sense of the world in which we live.

The richness and importance of the HASS learning area pivots on the exploration and understanding of how we are human, our interactions with others and our journey as humans in the world. We are the authors and actors in the story of our past, present and future, captured in the published and unpublished texts that inform our learning in HASS. Writings, drawings, maps, data, images, reports, laws, journals, plays, poetry and ephemera are available as physical and online items because they have been collected, organised, preserved, curated and shared by libraries and librarians, and their colleagues in associated institutions in physical and digital spaces.

Young children are developing and learning within an increasingly complex world where competing ideas are being contested and enacted in ways that impact on their daily experiences. The ethical nature of many of the decisions and beliefs that children encounter in their lives often requires complex reasoning and decision-making in which many children may not be supported. The development of ethically reasonable citizens within a society concerned for the emotional wellbeing of its members needs to begin early in life. Parents and families are primary socialisers for young children’s moral and ethical development; however, early learning centres and schools have a responsibility for providing children with opportunities for social emotional learning intended to foster ethical reasoning and empathic concern for others. This chapter introduces educators to some of the key aspects of dialogic pedagogies (namely, an empathic pedagogy that incorporates community of inquiry approaches) and sets out an argument for their use within the HASS learning area to support children’s ethical understanding. The ways in which ethical understanding are described in early years and primary curricula are explored, and suggestions provided for activities that can foster learners’ ethical understanding.

What does it mean to live a good life? Philosophers through the ages such as Aristotle, Plato, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche have wrestled with what it means to be a good citizen and live a good life. More recently, Howard Gardner applied his thinking to the skills that future generations need to synthesise and communicate complex ideas, respect human differences and fulfil the responsibilities of work, life and citizenship. He identified ‘five minds for the future’, one of which is the ethical mind. To be ethically minded calls upon citizens to know their rights and responsibilities, actively contribute to the good of society and foster citizenship within and between communities. Communities encompass the family, educational setting, workplace, nation and global community. It is through contributing to others as active and informed citizens that meaning is acquired.

Educators within contemporary Australian educational settings are increasingly being called on to enact their pedagogy in multicultural classrooms, yet pedagogies remain oriented towards a narrow learner cohort. Meaningful inclusion of culturally and religiously diverse learners not only focuses on what is being taught or what knowledge is privileged, but is concerned with how it is taught and from whose perspective. Importantly, it prioritises what learners bring to educational settings – their diverse knowledge(s), languages, values and beliefs; all of which are embedded in their ways of knowing, being and doing informed by their cultural and religious traditions. This chapter aims to support educators in enacting culturally responsive pedagogy, including consideration of learners’ world views, knowledge(s) and ways of knowing, as well as respect for identities and backgrounds as meaningful sources for optimal learning, while simultaneously holding high expectations of them all. Educators will be challenged to examine epistemological and pedagogical diversity in HASS teaching and learning, to further develop learners’ knowledge, values and beliefs towards engaged and informed citizenship.