Curriculum visions: The Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and Dwayne Huebner discuss civics and citizenship

Abstract

This article considers the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority's (ACARA) plan for Civics and Citizenship, assessing the role of religions therein. Through a dialectical hermeneutic, ACARA is brought into a mutually critical conversation with the work of curriculum theorist Dwayne Huebner. Both of their distinct visions are found to make space for diverse religious identities, and to affirm students taking responsibility for what they make of this world. They clash, however, over the path to societal harmony and the place given to discussing our deepest differences in belief and practice. In this article it is argued that a constructive use of Sacred Texts in Civics and Citizenship may facilitate a synergy between ACARA and Huebner that is educationally viable and democratically profitable. This would require that curriculum content is decentred to serve a dialogical pedagogy built on the sharing of our foundational narratives as together we pursue the common good.