Can you teach it if you cannot see it? Finding ‘the Anthropocene’ and enhancing its visibility in the NSW geography syllabus

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Anthropocene is a contested notion yet has taken hold as a term to describe the current state of global human-induced environmental changes, including biodiversity loss and climate change. Despite this fact, in the New South Wales Kindergarten to Year 10 Geography syllabus, ‘the Anthropocene’ is not explicitly mentioned. When a syllabus avoids engaging with such a key environmental concept, and this is combined with a high proportion of geography being taught by non-specialist teachers, missed opportunities emerge. This Thinking Space paper showcases how an academic geographer, post-graduate students, and a geography education academic in New South Wales collaborated to mitigate an absence of ‘the Anthropocene’ in syllabus content. We bring visibility to invisible content around ‘the Anthropocene’ by examining syllabus content and working through possible solutions. In doing so, we argue that the Anthropocene is explicitly absent yet implicitly present. We hope that this paper provides some pathways for teachers who may choose to include an important, yet seemingly absent, area of geographical content. It is also a call to foster collaborative opportunities between Geographers and Geography educators to support content development amongst school-based teachers of Geography.