Active participation Defining Moments

This learning module provides resources and classroom activities for teachers to use in their Australian Curriculum — Civics and Citizenship Year 8 classrooms.

It supports the Civics and Citizenship knowledge and understanding requirements for aspects of Australia’s government and democracy:

• the freedoms that enable active participation in Australia’s democracy within the bounds of law
• how citizens can participate in Australia’s democracy.

It does this by providing an engaging and interactive way for students to explore how citizens have used the rights and freedoms available in our democracy to bring about change. Topics covered in the module include a hypothetical situation, the historical cases involving the proposed Franklin Dam in Tasmania and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

The investigation provides a rich digital resource for classroom use. It includes contextual information, documents, images, scaffolded comprehension, analytical and extension questions, and individual, group and class activities. Using these materials and activities, students can explore aspects of the Year 8 knowledge and skills outcomes specified in the Australian Curriculum — Civics and Citizenship.

The learning module has been designed to draw on the National Museum of Australia’s Defining Moments in Australian History, together with some supplementary resources. Students do not need to visit that site to complete this learning module as the featured Defining Moments information used is available on this site.

The learning module contains:

• Setting the scene

Students respond to a plan to change a hypothetical local area. Teachers could substitute a real local place for Dingo Reserve to make the activity more real and immediate for students.

• Investigation 1.1: What happened with the Franklin Dam?

Having started to think about realistic and effective actions, students investigate the case of Tasmania’s Franklin Dam. They identify a range of actions that were taken, and recognise the underlying freedoms within the Australian democratic system that make such actions possible. The Franklin issue raises difficult questions about actions that break the law. Teachers will need to decide to what extent they pursue these issues with students.

• Investigation 1.2: Can citizens change the world? ICAN can

This activity introduces students to the idea of participating in democracy on a global scale through an investigation of ICAN, an Australian-based international organisation that is seeking to outlaw the use of nuclear weapons.

• Bringing it together

In this reflection activity students consider the recent school strikes for climate as a further example of active participation in Australia’s democracy.

The Defining Moments that are relevant to the different inquiry questions in the curriculum are:

Longer versions of the Defining Moments are available on the National Museum of Australia website.

Knowledge and understanding

• The freedoms that enable active participation in Australia’s democracy within the bounds of law (ACHCK061)
• How citizens can participate in Australia’s democracy (ACHCK062)

Inquiry and skills

Students will have exercised a number of these learning skills:

Questioning

• Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI094)

Researching

• Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI095)

Analysing

• Examine primary sources and secondary sources to determine their origin and purpose (ACHASSI098)
• Examine different viewpoints on actions, events, issues and phenomena in the past and present (ACHASSI099)

Evaluating and reflecting

• Evaluate evidence to draw conclusions (ACHASSI101)
• Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASSI102)
• Reflect on learning to propose personal and/or collective action in response to an issue or challenge, and predict the probable effects (ACHASSI104)

Interdisciplinary thinking

Students will have engaged with several of the concepts of:

• significance
• continuity and change
• cause and effect
• place and space
• interconnections
• roles, rights and responsibilities
• perspectives and action.

Cross-curriculum priorities

Students will have been involved in additional learning about some aspects of:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies
• Asia and the Pacific
• sustainability.

^{Source: The Australian Curriculum Humanities and Social Sciences, v8.3, December 2016, accessed 1 February 2019}

All case studies in the learning module have been designed to help students develop a number of the knowledge and skills outcomes specified in Australian Curriculum — Civics and Citizenship. At the end of each section teachers could use this matrix to help guide student discussion about what they have achieved. The matrix is suitable to be used from Years 5–10, but with teachers guiding the discussion as appropriate to the particular class. It could also be used for assessment purposes.

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