Citizenship Education at High-Schools in Australia: New South Wales

Abstract

The citizenship education programs in Australian as a multicultural society has been reviewed for nearly two decades and both major parties in the Commonwealth Parliament are intended to support this progress in the citizenship education. They also allocated funding for curriculum materials and professional development for teachers and educators. In recent years, both commonwealth and New South Wales (NSW) government have tried in making civic and citizenship curriculum as an educational priority in Australia. In this process teachers and educators have occupied a vital role in promoting of student’s knowledge, skill and understanding of civic values, as they are responsible to the way of how and what they have to teach students from different backgrounds and cultures. This paper investigates the role of citizenship education programs in NWSs’ high-schools in encouraging new generation to collaborate with each other in the multicultural society as good citizens as well as to explain how teachers and educators in high-schools play a central role to educate students from different backgrounds and cultures. The significance of citizenship education is that improve young student’s participation in political and civic life, and a developing body of evidence demonstrate that citizenship education can really have an influence on new generation’s participation in the society.