Abstract:
Many nations have experienced conflict over the content of their History curriculum, and protracted debates over the relative importance of skills (historical thinking) versus content (historical knowledge). Australia is no exception. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions over the importance of historical thinking in History education by exploring the changing conceptions of historical thinking in the History curricula of New South Wales (NSW) and its fate in the state's syllabus for the new Australian Curriculum: History. New South Wales has a significant tradition of History teaching in high schools, and a long tradition of a curricular focus on historical skills. This paper charts the changing forms and relative importance of historical skills as an explicit outcome of History education in NSW History curricula, from its emergence in the 1970s elective History curriculum to its current explication in the NSW syllabus for the mandatory Australian 'national' History curriculum. The study, through a close reading of NSW History syllabi, and an analysis of discussion in the professional journals of the periods in question, recognizes the importance of the British Schools Council influence upon historical skills in the NSW curriculum (particularly in the 1980s), but provides documentary evidence for the presence of a focus on historical skills a decade earlier in the new curricula of the 1970s. It argues that the current representation of historical skills (and concepts) in the Australian Curriculum reflects the construction of the same in the 2003 NSW History syllabus, but in its current instantiation, fails to ameliorate the problems of the 2003 syllabus, disconnecting such skills and concepts from specific topics, leaving them free-floating and a “quarantined curriculum” at risk of neglect by teachers.