With the Victorian Curriculum now effective in primary and secondary schools across Australia, Civics and Citizenship Education is mandated for delivery in all government schools throughout Victoria. The Victorian Electoral Commission explains how its tailored, free and flexible resources are helping teachers promote students’ participation in Australia’s democracy.
Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) promotes students’ participation in Australia’s democracy by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, values and dispositions of active and informed citizenship. It helps students familiarise themselves with Australia’s democratic heritage and traditions, political and legal institutions and the shared values of freedom, tolerance, respect, responsibility and inclusion.
So in what ways can we support our teachers to ensure that the CCE curriculum is adequately addressed? How can we ensure that students are at the centre of engaging, inquiry-based and practical units of CCE study?
James Fiford, Education and Electoral Inclusion Officer at the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), notes that teachers are often time poor, which can affect their ability to plan comprehensive units of work. Furthermore, teachers are sometimes asked to work outside the areas of their specific curriculum knowledge and financial limitations can preclude expensive external consultancy or commercial solutions. This is why the VEC has developed a series of tailored, free and highly flexible CCE resources.
As an independent and impartial statutory body, part of the VEC’s role is to run education programs to ensure that young people in Victoria understand democracy and the electoral process. Mr Fiford notes that for young people, while they often engage strongly on issues of social justice, elections may not be a particularly exciting subject. This is why the VEC has taken an issues-based, student-driven approach in its Passport to Democracy program.
The VEC regularly works with schools from Years 3 to 6 (as well as offering a comprehensive secondary school program). The active civics and citizenship concepts underpinning Passport to Democracy aim to develop critical thinking skills in students. It prompts them to consider how they can make an impact on issues they care about and, ultimately, how they can engage with the community and participate meaningfully in the democratic process. The AEC’s research tells us that providing young people with a positive experience of democracy in a school setting can set them up for a lifetime of civic participation.
How does the program work?
Passport to Democracy is divided into four modules: Decide, Research, Activate and Vote. Each module has a lesson plan containing learning activities with detailed instructions, online content and activity sheets. It can be delivered over six to eight weeks, or a smaller version is available if required. VEC Education Officers support teachers through on-site professional development sessions. They also offer a mock election for students as part of the Vote module.
1. Decide
The lesson plans in Decide expand on students’ existing knowledge of community issues. In groups, students choose an issue they care about and an aspect stemming from this issue that they want to change. Before deciding, they are supported to understand the complex notions of issues, communities, power and influence, rights, government, responsibility and points of view.
Students should ideally be supported in selecting their own issues to enable genuine student-centred inquiry learning. If teachers are delivering course content in upper primary or lower secondary, focusing on school-based issues is a good starting point. Middle secondary schools can focus on Victorian state-based issues, and in senior classes on either national or global issues. Any combination of these can, of course, work at any level if well supported.
2. Research
The Research lesson plans guide students to understand the social context of their issue, to discover what others have done about it and to test their own assumptions and possible solutions. Student research into an issue can have multiple goals. The activities in this unit elevates students to complete the entire research process, and assists them to develop critical literacy skills, while considering how their local political representatives might help.
3. Activate
The aim of the Activate lesson plans is to support students to choose actions that are achievable, appropriate and that can have an impact upon their chosen issue. These lessons contain many examples of active citizenship for inspiration, and they guide students to delegate tasks and campaign for awareness and support. Students can then use their research findings to plan and carry out an effective action.
4. Vote
The Vote lesson plans allow students to evaluate the impact of their action and reflect upon any change it has sparked, as well as their own active citizenship learning. Students also experience the electoral process through a complete sequence of electoral activities including candidate nominations, party platforms, campaign speeches, how to vote cards, a mock-election (including printed ballot papers) and a preferential vote count. Teachers completing a Passport to Democracy unit can request a free mock-election incursion run by the VEC (state-wide, including metro and rural areas) to demonstrate and celebrate students’ democratic participation. Vote lesson plans can also be used independently of the Passport unit, if teachers wish to focus only on elections and campaigns.
All lesson plans that comprise the Passport to Democracy program are aligned to the Victorian Curriculum and the Australian Curriculum for the teaching of Civics and Citizenship content across Years 5 to 10. In addition, the Passport to Democracy website, passport.vec.vic.gov.au, offers summative and formative assessment resources. It includes assignment instructions, a submission checklist and curriculum-aligned rubrics, plus a list of assessment for learning Passport activities.
New for 2019
Passport to Democracy will have two exciting additions in 2019. To celebrate the start of the school year, the website has been optimised to be mobile-friendly. This means that teachers can now utilise the student interactives on the website, and watch the embedded videos, with their students on either tablet or via smartphone. This will be useful to teachers operating one-to-one, or in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment, in their classrooms.
Another important addition to the Passport to Democracy online offer (available later in Term 1 of 2019) will be a suite of teacher professional learning materials. Consisting of small videos and information sheets, this advice will help teachers new to the resources, as well as assist regular users with extra ideas and tips.
How to book
By completing a booking form (available online at http://passport.vec.vic.gov.au/teachers/bookings/) teachers can order voting resources (voting screens, ballot boxes) and/or book a VEC education officer who can deliver teacher professional learning, and/or a mock election session to their class. All of the resources, and school visits by a VIT registered education officer, are offered free of charge by the VEC.
Buyer’s Guide
Victorian Electoral Commission
Passport to Democracy
Ph: 03 8620 1184
Email: education@vec.vic.gov.au