Can history succeed at school?

Problems of knowledge in the

Australian history curriculum

Rob Gilbert
University of Queensland

uccessful curriculum development in any school subject requires a clear and

established set of elements: agreed and widely appreciated goals; effective criteria for the selection of important knowledge content; and an explicit and
well-integrated explanatory base for authentic problem-solving related to the subject
goals. The article shows that the history discipline faces particular challenges in
meeting these requirements. The diversity of approaches to history complicates the
task of establishing consensus around a clear set of goals. Its association in popular
discourse with facts and narrative predisposes history to a descriptive approach, and
is not helpful in clarifying the foundational ideas on which historical explanation is
based. The article considers each of these issues and the extent to which they are
resolved in the development of the Australian history curriculum. It concludes that
these issues remain a challenge that could put at risk high-quality curriculum outcomes in history.

I recently interviewed a history teacher about his views on current changes to the
Australian curriculum. His greatest hope was that it might rescue him from teaching
his state history syllabus, which he described as being too historiographical. By this
he meant that it focused too much on issues of perspective and method in historical
explanation, which in his view was not really history. It seems strange that the
grounds for knowledge and the warrants for conclusions in a discipline could be
seen as separate from the discipline itself, but this separation is not uncommon
among historians. Historians are said to be suspicious of theory and method, and
by instinctive inclination hostile to philosophical and methodological criticism of
their work, often wishing to rely on common sense (Lloyd, 1996, p. 192). As
Evans (2000, p. 10) noted:
How we know about the past, what historical causation is, how we define a
historical fact, whether there is such a thing as historical truth or objectivity
these are questions that most historians have happily left to one side as
unnecessary distractions from their essential work in the archives.

Whatever the merits of these views in the practice of history, in the process of
curriculum development they are an obstacle to effective curriculum design. This
article considers a range of issues that arise from this relative neglect by historians
of the structure and processes of their discipline. It focuses on the relations, and in
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many instances the gaps, between analyses of the nature of history, and the need for
clear goals and explanatory frameworks for the purposes of developing a school
history curriculum.
History enters the public imaginary like few other disciplines. It appeals to the
public as a record of personal experience that fascinates in its difference from the
present, and provides links to those who have gone before in ways that can evoke
feelings of empathy, admiration or disdain. For academics and others who make a
living from its pursuit, history is a source of stories and heritage to be preserved,
origins to be traced and events to be explained. For politicians and the commentariat,
history is a tool of policy aimed at establishing national ethos and order, and a field
of skirmishes in culture wars. These various interests and motives go some way to
accounting for the passions that often surround discussion of the history curriculum.
In Australia in recent times, history and history curriculum development have
been decidedly political, and even prime ministers have vied for recognition as
revivers and protectors of the discipline.The politics of these history wars have been
recounted elsewhere (Bonnell, 2008; Brawley, 1997; Macintyre and Clark, 2003) as
have the associated political aspects of a national approach to the history curriculum
(Clark, 2006, 2008a; Taylor, 2006, 2009). These politics are not the main focus of
the present discussion, though they provide an important context for and influence
on it. Rather, the key questions to be dealt with here revolve around the nature of
the Australian history curriculum as curriculum, and in particular its adequacy
when assessed in light of essential ingredients of successful curriculum of any kind.
The significance of these questions lies in the importance often attributed to
history in school. There is sometimes predictable hyperbole in the way that
adherents to any subject laud the benefits of their particular enthusiasm but, as
noted, in the case of history, the view that history holds a special place in the
curriculum is widespread, reaching to the highest positions in the land. Relevant
here is the fact that historical knowledge is seen as central to a nations sense of
identityone of the most effective means by which the idea of the nation is made
a reality in the minds of its citizens (Tosh, 2008, p. 120)a purpose particularly
attractive to politicians who desire to construct this identity according to their own
ideological bents and concepts of national unity. One consequence of this is that
debates about the politics of the history curriculum and its relation to the nation
are perennial and widespread (Evans, 2004; Foster, 1998; Little, 1990; Osborne, 2003;
Symcox, 2002; Taylor and Guyver, 2011; Zimmerman, 2002).
Less often do public debates consider the adequacy of history curricula from
the perspective of curriculum development, yet the literature suggests that the
challenges to effective curriculum development in history are considerable, and that
they relate to the clarity of the nature and purpose of the discipline. The purpose
of this article is to identify these problems, and to scrutinise the development of the
Australian history curriculum in light of what are deemed to be three essential
requirements for a successful curriculum of any kind: namely, clarity of purpose and
intended outcomes; an effective rationale and framework for selecting knowledge
content; and a central explanatory framework that gives the curriculum its
intellectual power.
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The discussion will proceed by elaborating on these issues in the context of

school history, and assessing how they have been dealt with in the development of
the Australian history curriculum. Three documents are the focus of the analysis:
The national history curriculum: Framing paper (National Curriculum Board, 2008a), a
discussion paper preliminary to the development of the curriculum; The shape of the
Australian curriculum: History (National Curriculum Board, 2009), the guide to the
writing of the history curriculum K12; and The Australian curriculum: History
(Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2011), which sets out
the aims, organisation and knowledge and skills content of the curriculum. The
analysis considers how and to what extent the particular aspect of curriculum is
dealt with in the development of the curriculum, and its adequacy in light of the
challenges identified in the literature.

Goals of the history curriculum

The need for clarity of goals is especially great, given the diversity of the nature of
history itself, a diversity analysed extensively in the traditions of historiography. A
classic statement, which remains pertinent, is Nietzsches distinction of the 1870s
among monumental, antiquarian and critical history (Curthoys & Docker, 2006;
Nietzsche, 1997). In Nietzsches terms, monumental history regards the life of
humanity as a glorious thing, and celebrates the solidarity and continuity of
greatness of all ages as a protest against the passing away of generations and the
transitoriness of things. There is an echo here of recent calls for a national narrative
celebrating and embedding in the consciousness of the young an appreciation of
their Australianness (Clark, 2008b). For Nietzsche, antiquarian history emphasised
tending with care that which has existed from old, preserving even the trivial,
circumscribed, decaying and obsolete. This respect for the uniqueness of the past is
reflected in the popularity of historical fiction, family histories and museums.
Finally, critical history proposes that confronting change and the future requires that
we break up and dissolve a part of the past, and can assist in understanding how
we can and should tackle the future.
This diversity of types of history is paralleled by the range of claimed benefits
of studying it, and is well illustrated in the statement by Stearns (1998) for the
American Historical Association. Stearns argued that history is valuable as a
storehouse of information about how people and societies behave and why our
complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. He went on to cite the
beauty of historical narrative, moral understanding, the formation of identity and
good citizenship as further indications of the importance of history; the result is a
long and diffuse list of benefits, but it lacks the focus that would be required for
curriculum design.
Clarity about the nature and purpose of a subject is a prerequisite for effective
curriculum development.This is a particular challenge for history, since international
commentators have observed a lack of consensus over the nature and goals of school
history (Levesque, 2005). Rothstein (2004) argued that there is such little agreement
about the purposes of history in the USA that it is impossible to assess it in any valid
way. This problem is not new. Wineburg, commenting on the US history wars of
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the late 1980s and 1990s, observed that The debate over which history to teach so
dominated the debate (falling out along predictable political lines) that the more
important question of why teach history in the first place was lost (Wineburg, 2001,
p. xii).
Similar problems exist in Australia. In the National History Summit set up by
Prime Minister John Howard, leading historians were brought together to advise
the government on What in Australian history should every school student learn
about? (Bishop, 2006a). A marked feature of the summit was the lack of discussion
of why students should be studying Australian history, and which, of all the possible
approaches to the history curriculum, was most needed. The poverty of the summit
discussion of the purposes of history is illustrated in its communiqu:
Australia is one of the worlds oldest continuous democracies and, moreover, it
compels people to vote. A knowledge of our history is therefore vital. Nearly all
of the crucial public and parliamentary debates embody and appeal to history.We
are convinced of the urgent need for a nationwide revival in the teaching of
Australian History and its global, environmental and social contexts. (Department
of Education, Science and Training, 2006, p. 82)

There is a thread of argument here, but hardly one sufficient to act as the base of a
nationally compulsory subject. In light of more general claims for history education,
this is a very modest rationale, and, if understanding public and parliamentary
debates is the key criterion, students need to study much more than history. A key
member of the summit later commented that:
We have not really had a debate about the desirability of teaching history, in
particular Australian history, as a compulsory subject. It has just been assumed by
both sides of politics that compulsory Australian history is a good thing
(Melleuish, 2007, p. 18)

Yet this neglect cannot be assumed to reflect an established consensus on the nature
and goals of history. Simpson and Halse (2006) studied the development of the 1998
New South Wales Stages 45 history syllabus, and found a range of conflicting
emphases among stakeholders. The different perspectives of stakeholders were
plotted in terms of four opposing emphases: on fact or interpretation, core or
electives, knowledge or skills, and the development of person or national identity.
The study showed a diversity of views among stakeholders, and anything but a
consensus around the official government position. The authors concluded that
consensus was more a matter of illusion rather than substance, and that the stance
of the DET [Department of Education and Training] highlighted the divergence
between political and community perspectives and priorities (Simpson & Halse,
2006, p. 365).
The political interest in history, and the intrigue and machinations that
accompany it (Taylor, 2009), complicate the task of clarifying historys goals. In a
2006 speech, Prime Minister Howard lamented a lack of structured narrative in the
curriculum, claiming that young people are at risk of being disinherited from their
community if that community lacks the courage and confidence to teach its history
(Howard, 2006).This argument from identity was replaced by the succeeding Prime
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Minister Rudd with an emphasis on more pragmatic benefits to recognise and

handle evidence and arguments in the contemporary world. As illustration Rudd
added yet another argument, claiming that young people in small businesses, for
example, may be called on to make judgements in the face of incomplete or
conflicting evidence (Rudd & Smith, 2007, p. 17).
In short, the purposes of teaching history have not been adequately clarified.
It might be expected that a decision to make a subject compulsory across the nation
would be based on deeper consideration. While many history researchers and
educators see history as a vocation providing its own justification, at school level,
the obligation to justify compulsion is more onerous.
These comments illustrate the context in which the aims of the Australian
history curriculum were developed. The Framing papers (National Curriculum
Board, 2008a) discussion of aims is a lengthy and discursive list beginning with the
statement that:
[a] fundamental objective of school history is to provide students with knowledge,
understanding and appreciation of the past in order to appreciate their and
others culture, to understand better the present and to contribute to debate
about planning for the future. (National Curriculum Board, 2008a, p. 2)

This is followed by a range of statements about rationales for history, the nature of
students backgrounds and teaching methods. A more focused list is provided in the
Shape paper (National Curriculum Board, 2009, p. 5), including the fundamental
objective from the Framing paper, and three additional aims relating to critical
understanding of the past through analysis of different historical accounts, the skills
of finding and evaluating information, and a rather vague statement of the
importance of factual knowledge in historical enquiry. It must be said that the
statement of aims in the Shape paper is a poor reflection of the claimed benefits of
the study of history, not only as set out in both the Framing and Shape papers, but
also in the broader discussion of history education.
The final statement of aims in the Australian curriculum: History shows little sign
of its provenance in the Shape and Framing papers. It provides a brief rationale
emphasising appreciation and understanding of the past, but is muted on what
might be called the broader benefits of history, such as the references to identity,
self-awareness and a futures orientation in the Framing and Shape papers. The
curriculum:
aims to ensure that students develop:
interest in, and enjoyment of, historical study for lifelong learning and work,
including their capacity and willingness to be informed and active citizens
knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the past and the forces that
shape societies, including Australian society
understanding and use of historical concepts, such as evidence, continuity and
change, cause and effect, perspectives, empathy, significance and contestability
capacity to undertake historical inquiry, including skills in the analysis and use
of sources, and in explanation and communication. (Australian Curriculum,
Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2011, p. 1)
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Gone from the earlier fundamental objective is any specific reference to

understanding the present or planning for the future. In its place is the unusual
suggestion that interest and enjoyment of historical study include the capacity and
willingness to be informed and active citizens. Skills remain a focus, with the
addition of conceptual understanding, and an exclusive focus on knowledge of the
past. In total, this is a modest set of aims. While the statements about concepts and
skills provide useful guides to more detailed specification, the broader goals of
history curriculum, on which the mandate of the subject is presumably based, are
very unclear. The stated aims are nowhere elaborated, since the document proceeds
immediately to more mundane matters of Content Structure. There is a clear
implication here that the broader benefits, such as the capacity and willingness for
active citizenship, flow automatically from the knowledge and skills of history. To
this extent, history is its own justification, untroubled by the need to demonstrate
more instrumental value. But even these very modest and inward-looking aims
present challenges, since the discipline of history is fraught with other problems that
complicate the curriculum development process, not least of which is the challenge
of content.

The problem of content

A successful curriculum will comprise a framework that provides clear criteria for
selecting knowledge, establishing priorities within it and relating them to the goals
of the curriculum. The content problem has long been a challenge for school
history, bedevilled as it is with stereotypes of encyclopaedic lists of names and dates.
Yet this is clearly at least part of what some see as the essence of history. In 2006,
the Australian Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, identified the task of the History
Summit as to broadly sketch the essential narrativethe facts and detailsof
Australian history with which every student should become familiar during their
schooling (Bishop, 2006a). In a related article, she stated that:
it is important for students to develop a body of knowledge that is rich in dates,
facts and events, and from which students can then draw their own opinions
about historical events. Without learning these primary ingredients of history,
students are less able to form valuable conclusions. (Bishop, 2006b)

The difficulty here is that the raw material of history is everything that has
happened in the past, but the traditions of the subject lack clear grounds for the
stringent selection needed, a problem that has been aggravated rather than alleviated
by recent developments in the discipline. In the late 19th century, it was possible for
Freemans edict (Freeman, 1886, p. 44) that history is past politics to be widely
accepted. Fifty years later, Trevelyan (1944) made the case for social history as
history with the politics left out, rendering the content of history into two main
categories. But there are now journals in Aboriginal, financial, agricultural,
economic, literary, art, business, military, church, cultural, diplomatic, environmental,
international, maritime, naval, labour, global, interdisciplinary, legal, urban, rural,
womens, world, landscape, parliamentary and transport history, among others.There
are journals in the history of ideas, intellectual culture, political economy, political
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thought, religions, science, technology, sport, sexuality and philosophy, among

others. There is a host of journals in national and regional histories. On what basis
can this mountain of information and scholarship, the content of history, be selected
and organised? How does the curriculum select from among these diverse
possibilities?
The History Summit struggled with this issue. As the brief of the summit was
to recommend a curriculum based on a narrative approach, participants were
somewhat constrained, and ultimately failed to solve the content problem. Their
chosen strategy was to try to provide a focus to the infinite range of possible content
by identifying a key question to guide enquiry of each of the various historical
periods. The reasoning behind the selection of particular questions was not entirely
clear, since they were derived from the pre-specified historical period, rather than
the reverse, which from a curriculum perspective would have been the more logical
sequence.
A key to this problem of content selection is that the study of history cannot
in itself determine what is important for students to know. History can provide
concepts and thinking skills for analysing questions about the past but it does not,
in itself, determine which questions are worth asking. Here a different set of criteria
is needed, ranging from contemporary issues to enduring aspects of the human
condition, all of which will be chosen not only on the basis of some philosophy,
theory or set of values, but also on present understanding of current issues, events,
trends and social forces. This link to the present raises problems for history, as noted
by the past president of the American Historical Association, who, in observing the
growing interest among university students in contemporary history, commented:
There is a certain irony in the presentism of our current historical understanding:
it threatens to put us out of business as historians. If the undergraduates flock to
20th-century courses and even PhD students take degrees mostly in 20th-century
topics, then history risks turning into a kind of general social studies subject (as
it is in K12). It becomes the short-term history of various kinds of identity
politics defined by present concerns and might therefore be better approached
via sociology, political science, or ethnic studies. (Hunt, 2007)

Thornton and Barton (2010, p. 2488) pursued these implications further, arguing
that Because the academic discipline of history does not restrict selection of
content among its members, criteria for making educational decisions about the
school curriculum must arise elsewhere. They identified the two main sources as
political conservatism particularly in its nationalistic and patriotic forms, and the
tradition of preparing reflective citizens for a democratic societya tradition best
represented by educators associated with the school subject known as social studies
(p. 2489).
There is simply no clear process or model within the discipline of history for
selecting historical content, other than the obvious one of information about the
major periods across time. But this is no selection at all, and is the reason that history
courses are typically overloaded with information content. The unfortunate
consequence is the implication, intended or otherwise, that knowledge of this
information content is the main purpose of the subject.
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The Australian history curriculum goes to some pains to scaffold its content,
presumably to try to ensure that the more significant aspects of content are not
overwhelmed by the amount of descriptive detail. Each two-year band of the
subject is labelled with a curriculum focus. Each year level is prefaced with a list
of concepts to be developed and enquiry questions to be considered. In the
secondary years, an overview is provided of the knowledge and understanding to
be developed, followed by depth studies with choices of the particular locations or
periods to be studied.
Nonetheless, the document presents as primarily focused on information to
be learned about periods of the past. The early years are largely thematic, moving
to a chronological organisation of Australian history in the primary years, and a
strictly chronological world history from Years 7 to 10. The clear implication is that
the overriding organisational framework is the chronology of past events. Even the
enquiry questions emphasise information rather than problem-solving. Of the 15
questions in the secondary years, at least 11 are primarily or exclusively descriptive.
(For example: What have been the legacies of ancient societies? How did societies
change from the end of the ancient period to the beginning of the modern age?
What was the origin, development, significance and long-term impact of
imperialism in this period? How did the nature of global conflict change during the
20th century?) Such questions do not engage students in authentic problem-solving,
decision-making, or discussions of significance for the present or future.
The tendency for history to be dominated by information content is difficult
to avoid, and there are clear signs in some of its sections that the Australian history
curriculum has not succeeded in doing so. But information, while not the same as
knowledge, is not harmful (other than in crowding out more useful kinds of
learning); if organised and applied within a deeper explanatory discourse,
information is of course a valuable resource. The question therefore moves to the
explanatory processes of history and their manifestation in the curriculum.

Historical process and conceptual explanation in the

history curriculum
If history has no defining content other than the infinite events of the past, then it
is difficult to see how a clear framework for history curriculum can be based on
content.This has led some to believe that the essence of history lies not in its content,
but in the process of historical enquiry. As Jones concluded some 40 years ago:
Arguments about the content of a syllabus can go on without end because of the
infinite variety of history If we were to take greater concern for methodology,
we might be on firmer ground. (Jones, 1970, p. 387)

A more recent statement came to a similar conclusion:

the contribution of historical education needs to be defended, not in terms of
this or that discrete body of knowledge, but as training in a mode of thought of
practical relevance to citizens. (Tosh, 2008, p. 21)
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But the Australian National Curriculum Board (predecessor to the Australian

Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) rejected this reasoning, noting
that the pressures of expanding knowledge have led to:
a view that it would be better to focus on the processes used in particular
domains of knowledge rather than on knowledge itself The result is a focus on
scientific investigation rather than science, a focus on historical method rather
than history. (National Curriculum Board, 2008b)

The Board concluded that This kind of separation of content and process is not
helpful (National Curriculum Board, 2008b, p. 7). The Board then noted that The
problem representations of experts depend on deep knowledge and understandings
within the domain from which the problems are drawn, with the implication that
subject rationale statements will make clear where the choice is based on big
ideas that are essential to deep understanding of a domain of knowledge (National
Curriculum Board, 2008b, p. 7).
There is a clear echo in this National Curriculum Board statement of the
work of the US National Research Council on How People Learn, and its
conclusion that:
An important point that emerges from the expert-novice literature is the need
to emphasize connected knowledge that is organized around the foundational ideas
of a discipline. Research on expertise shows that it is the organization of
knowledge that underlies experts abilities to understand and solve problems.
(National Research Council, 2005, p. 15, emphasis in original)

This leads to consideration of the two key possibilities for identifying the deep
knowledge and foundational ideas of history: narrative explanation and conceptual
models.
Narrative, in the popular mind, is the paradigmatic form of historical discourse,
but researchers debate whether narrative is a form of explanation at all. In itself, the
telling of a story, while recounting a sequence of events, does not demonstrate
causal connections among them; nor does it provide understanding that can be
applied elsewhere. Rather, narrative is more accurately seen as a form of description
of what happened organised on a linear temporal basis. The associated strategies of
colligation and periodisation are processes of categorising and ordering to make
sense of disparate events, again primarily descriptive processes. While perhaps
aiming to offer explanation, narrative fails to do so, largely because it cannot avoid
the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy without going beyond the narrative form. As
Vellerman (2003, p. 22) has observed, Telling a story is often a means to being
believed for no good reason; and Benjamin (1936): It is half the art of storytelling
to keep a story free from explanation. At the History Summit, Clendinnen warned
against the assumption that there are certain narratives which ought to be told,
noting that The problem with narrative is that it is an elongated answer to an
unstated question (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006, p. 41).
If narrative fails to offer the deep knowledge for problem-solving in history,
the other major option is to focus on the explanatory concepts of history, a strategy
that has attracted considerable attention in recent history education. Lees analysis
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of the key concepts of history (included in the work of the US National Research
Council mentioned above) identified two types of concepts operating at different
levels of historical discourse: substantive concepts, such as political concepts of state,
government, power, and so on, but also concepts of a different kind, such as
evidence, cause, and change (Lee, 2005, p. 32). These latter concepts, which Lee
refers to as metahistorical or second-order disciplinary knowledge, are not usually
explicit, even though they are at the heart of the discipline (p. 32). Elsewhere Lee
refers to long-run themes like population change, migration and cultural encounter
as serving the role of substantive concepts. Lees key concepts (Time, Change,
Empathy, Cause, Evidence, Accounts) are relatively commonplace and obvious, and
this, together with their rather skeletal nature, may account for their lack of
influence in history curriculum development.
On the other hand, a set of concepts identified in Canada, labelled Benchmarks
of Historical Thinking (Seixas, 2006) offer a more elaborated and complex guide to
historical understanding, and feature in the Framing paper and the Shape paper of the
Australian history curriculum. The Shape paper retains the distinction between
substantive descriptive concepts and Seixass more meta-historical concepts:
The knowledge of history is reflected in the concepts that are used to explore
what happened in the past. These include revolution, imperialism, religion,
everyday life and the concept of world war.
Historical understanding is developed through additional concepts that help to
make sense of the past. International research on historical pedagogy has
identified core components of historical understanding. (National Curriculum
Board, 2009, p. 6)

There follows a list of Seixass benchmarks of historical thinking (Historical

significance, Evidence, Continuity and change, Cause and consequence, Historical
perspectives, Historical empathy and moral judgement), with the addition of two
further concepts of contestation and contestability, and problem-solving. It seems
clear that the Australian history curriculum developers saw these concepts as the
foundational ideas of the discipline.
There is a difficulty in history curriculum development in this two-tier
analysis of historical concepts: the substantive or descriptive concepts are not
distinctively historical, but are drawn from other disciplinary discourses. This
problem has been touched on in the discussion of presentism above, but has been
elaborated further by Thornton and Barton (2010, p. 2484)
Perhaps ironically, students can only develop a meaningful understanding of
history if they study something other than history, for all historical content
depends on concepts that are not themselves specifically historical Both the
topics of historical study (e.g., class, gender, race) and the nature of historical
explanations (e.g., psychological, economic, geographic) depend on concepts
that transcend particular examples the study of history consists entirely of
concrete instances of concepts drawn from economics, sociology, geography, and
so on, and if students are not given the opportunity to learn those concepts,
much of the history they encounter will be unintelligible.
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The Australian history curriculum does not consider the implications of these
arguments, but the Framing paper acknowledges a parallel with the social sciences in
stating that Like the social sciences, [history] employs explanatory models and
evidence to test hypotheses and reach conclusions about social behaviour (National
Curriculum Board, 2008a, p. 1). Using explanatory models to test hypotheses like
the social sciences is unlikely to represent what most historians believe that they do;
it may be for this reason that the Framing paper does not say what these explanatory
models are, and the idea does not appear in later documents.
But the focus on concepts is an explicit part of the Australian history
curriculum. The list of concepts for developing historical understanding is yet
another variation on Seixass list, comprising Evidence, Continuity and change,
Cause and effect, Significance, Perspectives, Empathy and Contestability (deleting
problem-solving from the list in the Shape paper). The question is, of course, how
and to what extent these concepts actually do form the basis for articulation of the
curriculum and the teaching and learning derived from it.
Certainly the list of concepts is repeated in the introduction to the content of
each year level. But in the detailed specifications for study in the four years 7 to 10,
the most frequently occurring concepts are evidence and significance;contestability
is mentioned twice across the four years, continuity three times; perspective is a
category heading in historical skills, and appears in some specific topic descriptions;
cause appears six times in the descriptions, three of which relate to the causes of
the world wars; empathy does not appear in any year. In short, the explicit focus
on the concepts of history in the detail of each years study is very fragmented and
variable, and whether they will be taught as concepts to be applied to authentic
problem-solving is impossible to say. If the development of these concepts was to
be a priority, they would need a more central, conspicuous and consistent role in
the organising framework of the syllabus.

Conclusion
This discussion has identified problems in the extent to which there is consensus
and clarity in the discipline of history around required elements for effective
curriculum development. The noted lack of consensus on the purposes of history
has not been resolved, either in the History Summit and related public debates, or
in the various documents created in the process of developing the Australian history
curriculum. The solution in the history syllabus seems to have been to avoid this
issue altogether by focusing its aims on the self-defining goals of historical
knowledge and enquiry, with no particular regard to their application beyond the
subject. This must be seen as an unsatisfactory position from which to justify the
mandating across the nation of extensive time to the study of a subject.
But even these self-referential goals present a challenge. First is the perennial
problem of managing the infinite range of information content in history.While the
history syllabus has attempted to ensure that the focus is on understanding, it has
not avoided the impression that the syllabus is overloaded with information. Even
the provision of enquiry questions, clearly an attempt to promote thinking over rote
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learning, is dominated by a focus on information content. The second problem is

the lack of a well-established explanatory framework for history.
The conceptual approach chosen is an appropriate one, and, if applied to the
solution of authentic historical problems, could offer a valuable set of learnings.
However, the integration of these concepts into the content specification is quite
uneven. Given their novelty as a foundation for school history, these concepts will
not easily be developed by teachers unless the curriculum makes their centrality to
historical enquiry much more explicit. While substantial intellectual engagement
may occur in the historical skills sections of the syllabus, the foundational concepts
are not well integrated into these sections. The enquiry questions specified do not
assist in this, dominated as they are by convergent and descriptive questions with
pre-specified answers. The impression of content overload merely aggravates these
difficulties. The future of the Australian history curriculum is quite secure at the
level of government mandate. But, in light of the curriculum problems identified
here, the guarantee of quality learning outcomes is much less so.
Keywords
curriculum
social sciences

history
curriculum content

core curriculum
educational objectives

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Author
Rob Gilbert is Emeritus Professor at the School of Education, University of
Queensland.
Email: rob.gilbert@uq.edu.au

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