General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum: Science

The general capabilities play a significant role in the Australian Curriculum in equipping young Australians to live and work successfully in the twenty-first century. In the Australian Curriculum, capability encompasses knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions. Students develop capability when they apply knowledge and skills confidently, effectively and appropriately in complex and changing circumstances, in their learning at school and in their lives outside school. The Australian Curriculum includes seven general capabilities, as shown in the figure.

In the Australian Curriculum: Science, which are provided to give teachers general capabilities are identified where ideas about how they might teach the they are developed or applied in the content. Icons are used to indicate content descriptions. They are also where general capabilities have been identified where they offer opportunities identified in learning area content to add depth and richness to student descriptions and elaborations. learning via the content elaborations,

www.australiancurriculum.edu.au Critical and Literacy Creative Thinking

In the Australian Curriculum: Science, In the Australian Curriculum: Science, students develop a broader literacy capability students develop capability in critical and as they explore and investigate their creative thinking as they learn to generate and world. They are required to comprehend evaluate knowledge, ideas and possibilities, and compose texts including those that and use them when seeking new pathways provide information, describe events and or solutions. In the science learning area, phenomena, recount experiments, present critical and creative thinking are embedded and evaluate data, give explanations and in the skills of posing questions, making present opinions or claims. They will also need predictions, speculating, solving problems to comprehend and compose multimedia through investigation, making evidence-based texts such as charts, graphs, diagrams, decisions, and analysing and evaluating pictures, maps, animations, models and evidence. Students develop understandings visual media. Language structures are used to of concepts through active inquiry that link information and ideas, give descriptions involves planning and selecting appropriate information, evaluating sources of information and explanations, formulate hypotheses to formulate conclusions and to critically reflect and construct evidence-based arguments on their own and the collective process. capable of expressing an informed position. Creative thinking enables the development of By learning the literacy of science, students ideas that are new to the individual, and this understand that language varies according is intrinsic to the development of scientific to context and they increase their ability to understanding. Scientific inquiry promotes use language flexibly. Scientific vocabulary is critical and creative thinking by encouraging often technical and includes specific terms for flexibility and open-mindedness as students concepts and features of the world, as well speculate about their observations of the as terms that encapsulate an entire process world and the ability to use and design in a single word, such as ‘photosynthesis’. new processes to achieve this. Students’ Language is therefore essential in providing conceptual understanding becomes more the link between the concept itself and student sophisticated as they actively acquire an understanding and for assessing whether increasingly scientific view of their world and the the student has understood the concept. ability to examine it from new perspectives.

www.australiancurriculum.edu.au Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability Numeracy

In the Australian Curriculum: Science, Many elements of numeracy are evident in the students develop ICT capability when they Australian Curriculum: Science, particularly in research science concepts and applications, Science Inquiry Skills. These include practical investigate scientific phenomena and measurement and the collection, representation communicate their scientific understandings. and interpretation of data from investigations. In particular, they use their ICT capability Students are introduced to measurement, to access information; collect, analyse first using informal units then formal units. and represent data; model and interpret Later, they consider issues of uncertainty concepts and relationships; and communicate and reliability in measurement. As students science ideas, processes and information. progress, they collect qualitative and quantitative data, which are analysed and Technology can be used to access information represented in graphical forms. Students beyond our senses capability and to represent learn data analysis skills, including identifying scientific phenomena in ways that improve trends and patterns from numerical data and students’ understanding of concepts, ideas graphs. In later years, numeracy demands and information. Digital aids such as animations include the statistical analysis of data, including and simulations provide opportunities to view issues relating to accuracy and validity, and phenomena and test predictions that cannot the use of mathematical relationships to be investigated through practical experiments calculate and predict values and the use in the classroom and may enhance students’ of mathematical tools to provide evidence understanding and engagement with science. in support of hypotheses or positions.

Intercultural understanding

There are opportunities in the Australian They become aware that the raising of Curriculum: Science for students to develop some debates within culturally diverse intercultural understanding. Students groups requires cultural sensitivity. They learn to appreciate the contribution that recognise that increasingly scientists work diverse cultural perspectives have made in culturally diverse teams and engage with to the development, breadth and diversity culturally diverse communities to address of science knowledge and applications. issues of international importance.

www.australiancurriculum.edu.au Personal and Ethical Social Capability understanding

In the Australian Curriculum: Science, In the Australian Curriculum: Science, students develop personal and social students develop the capacity to form capability as they engage in science inquiry, and make ethical judgements in relation to learn how scientific knowledge informs and experimental science, codes of practice, and is applied in their daily lives, and explore the use of scientific information and science how scientific debate provides a means of applications. They explore what integrity means contributing to their communities. This includes in science, and explore and apply ethical developing skills in communication, initiative guidelines in their investigations. They consider taking, goal setting, interacting with others the implications of their investigations on and decision-making, and the capacity to others, the environment and living organisms. work independently and collaboratively. They use scientific information to evaluate The Science learning area enhances personal claims and to inform ethical decisions and social capability by expanding students’ about a range of social, environmental capacity to question, solve problems, explore and personal issues, for example, land and display curiosity. Students use their use or the treatment of animals. scientific knowledge to make informed choices about issues that impact their lives such as health and nutrition and environmental change, and consider the application of science to meet a range of personal and social needs.