Over the years, there have been various calls to increase and better represent astronomy in curricula. This is motivated by views within the astronomy and astronomy education communities that the awe, wonder, and interdisciplinary nature of astronomy has the potential to engage students in STEM across disciplines. Reviews of curricula have shown…

Time estimations, patterns and measurement sense are important skills to develop within the mathematics classroom (Mildenhall, 2016; Thomas et al., 2017). To develop a true understanding of time, students need to holistically understand: the language of time, the notion of duration and succession, how time is measured, and the concept of time…

The concept of 'knowledge' is central to education, particularly when it comes to the school curriculum. This paper makes the case for engaging in conceptual analysis, and in particularly conceptual engineering, in educational studies. Conceptual engineering emphasises analysing concepts with their purposes in mind. To illustrate the importance of…

In this article, I argue that the common practice across many school mathematics curricula of using a variety of different representations of number may diminish the coherence of mathematics for students. Instead, I advocate prioritising a single representation of number (the number line) and applying this repeatedly across diverse content areas.…

Grade 8 students were given a task that had pairs of shapes that had been transformed (i.e., preimages and images). Students were to identify which of the three rigid transformations--reflections, rotations, or translations--were used to map the preimage to the image. Students were also asked to give a justification for their choice of…

Big ideas, sometimes referred to as key, core, fundamental or threshold concepts, are widely applicable concepts at the heart of disciplines that are or have been central and influential for their fields. Attention here is particularly directed to meta-concepts common to sister disciplines in the sciences. "Learning thresholds",…

This paper invites the reader to investigate the importance of developing an understanding of the 'Big Picture' that puts specific events or periods within an historical context. It argues for the importance of developing wider historical perspectives for children to begin to make relevant connections, locally nationally and globally. It is only…

This article examines whether geography can provide the powerful knowledge that is a key element of a Future 3 curriculum, and an important component of the GeoCapabilities Project's proposals for the teaching of geography. Powerful knowledge is knowledge that gives students the intellectual ability to analyse, explain, predict, evaluate and think…

Richard Harris draws on their own and others' research to take stock of where the history teaching community is in terms of curriculum thinking. Harris argues that despite a number of positive developments in recent years, certain issues continue to have undesirable effects on curriculum design. Such issues include inertia and unclear rationales…

This article argues that an understanding of disciplinary knowledge production helps to underpin a conceptual structure for the humanities curriculum. This is important as a conceptual curriculum more overtly supports knowledge production for both pupils and teachers than one that is solely focused on propositional knowledge. It can mean the…

In June 2020, an Australian Curriculum (AC) review was announced, particularly regarding content crowding in primary years, flexibility and deep understanding of core concepts. The language of the announcement highlighted again the 'competing-priorities' discourse that suggests a disjuncture between focusing on fundamental knowledge and skills of…

This paper discusses the apparent amnesia with regard to insights manifested in ecofeminist thought and applies a re-collective analysis to thinking on the implications of an ecofeminist new materialism for contemporary environmental education research, and curriculum practice. We engage with a conversation between feminist new materialism and the…

Learning Trajectories have the potential to be used as a tool to advance equity by explicitly connecting to anti-deficit framing and asset-based instruction. This plenary paper highlights research on three use cases for learning trajectories (LT) with an intentionality around promoting equity: 1) the use of LT based Lesson Study with vertical…

In recent years, attention has turned to the development of evidenced-based learning progressions/trajectories as a means of identifying the likely paths learners might take in developing a deep, well-connected understanding of key aspects of mathematics. However, the extent to which this work influences what happens in mathematics classrooms…

After situating the figuration of the postdevelopmental child in the context of hegemonic colonising developmental discourses about child rearing and education, I engage with posthumanist perspectives that rupture the binaries, power relations and age discrimination these discourses assume. Developmentalism raises concerns about how child as…