The VCAA has published the Victorian Curriculum F–10 Version 2.0. To view the curriculum, familiarisation resources and support material, go to the Victorian Curriculum F–10 Version 2.0 website.
Go to the VCAA website to explore the timeline for familiarisation and implementation of the Victorian Curriculum Version 2.0 (including upcoming dates for curriculum areas still being reviewed) and register for professional learning webinars.
The Geography curriculum presents a structured way of exploring, analysing and understanding the characteristics of the places that make up our world, using the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change. It addresses scales from the personal to the global and time periods from a few years to thousands of years.
Geography as a discipline integrates the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to build a holistic understanding of the world. Spatial thinking and geospatial technologies increasingly inform scholarship in these areas. In this sense, aspects of Geography are a component of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), fostering the development and application of distinctive STEM skills. Students learn to question why the world is the way it is, reflect on their relationships with and responsibility for that world and propose actions designed to shape a socially just and sustainable future.
The concept of place develops students’ curiosity and wonder about the diversity of the world’s places, peoples, cultures and environments. Students examine why places have particular environmental and human characteristics, explore the similarities and differences between them, investigate their meanings and significance to people and examine how they are managed and changed.
Students use the concept of space to investigate the effects of location and distance on the characteristics of places, the significance of spatial distributions, and the organisation and management of space at different scales. Through the concept of environment students learn about the role of the environment in supporting the physical and emotional aspects of human life, the important interrelationships between people and environments, and the range of views about these interrelationships.
Students use the concept of interconnection to understand how the causal relationships between places, people and environments constantly change their characteristics. Through the concept of sustainability students explore how the environmental functions that support their life and wellbeing can be sustained. The concept of scale helps them explore problems and look for explanations at different levels, such as local or regional. The concept of change helps them to explain the present and forecast possible futures.
The Geography curriculum teaches students to respond to questions in a geographically distinctive way, to collect, evaluate, analyse and interpret information, and suggest responses to what they have learned. They conduct fieldwork, map and interpret data and spatial distributions, and use spatial technologies. These skills can be applied in everyday life and at work.
The Geography curriculum aims to ensure that students develop:
