Intercultural Understanding
The Connect with Maths communities are founded on Australian Curriculum framework. Specific links to the Make it count with Indigenous Learners' community work relates to the General Capabilities: Intercultural Understanding and the Australian Curriculum. This document identifies students who come from different cultural backgrounds and learning experiences, providing a guide for teachers to consider teaching and learning strategies that will bring out the best in student learning.
The Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum promotes equity and high quality teaching for all students. We want our students to appreciate the value and usefulness of mathematics, and to be confident and intrinsic users of mathematics in their lives. This community calls upon teachers who have an interest in this area of professional engagement.
Important drivers of the Make it count with Indigenous learners' community is the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008) (Melbourne Declaration) provides the policy framework for the Australian Curriculum.
It includes two goals:
(ACARA, 2012). The propositions that shape the development of the Australian Curriculum establish expectations that the Australian Curriculum is appropriate for all students. These propositions include that:
- each student can learn and the needs of every student are important
- each student is entitled to knowledge, understanding and skills
- these provide a foundation for successful and lifelong learning and participation in the Australian community
- high expectations should be set for each student while teachers take into account the current level of learning of individual students and the different rates at which students develop
- the needs and interests of students will vary, and schools and teachers will plan from the curriculum in ways that respond to those needs and interests.
The Melbourne Declaration emphasises the importance of knowledge, understanding and skills from each learning area, general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities as the basis for a curriculum designed to support 21st-century learning.
The Australian Curriculum is formed by these three dimensions, and it is the relationship between these dimensions that provides flexibility for schools and teachers to ‘promote personalised learning that aims to fulfil the diverse capabilities of each young Australian’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p.7).
Cross Curriculum Priorities
The Australian Curriculum is designed to meet the needs of students by delivering a relevant, contemporary and engaging curriculum that builds on the educational goals of the Melbourne Declaration. The Melbourne Declaration identified three key areas that need to be addressed for the benefit of both individuals and Australia as a whole. In the Australian Curriculum these have become priorities that provide students with the tools and language to engage with and better understand their world at a range of levels. The priorities provide dimensions which will enrich the curriculum through development of considered and focused content that fits naturally within learning areas. They enable the delivery of learning area content at the same time as developing knowledge, understanding and skills relating to:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
- Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
- sustainability.
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Mathematics/Cross-Curriculum-Priorities
