Walshe, Rachael, Evans, N.S. (Snowy), and Law, Lisa (2022) Mapping community gardens in the Australian National Curriculum: A curriculum analysis model. Issues in Educational Research, 32 (2). pp. 784-804.

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Abstract

The Australian Curriculum is a policy document that directly influences the lived realities of millions of students and teachers. However, navigating and understanding the Australian Curriculum can be confusing due to discipline-specific meta-language. This poses problems when attempting to access the Curriculum in research that extends beyond the Education discipline. In response, this paper proposes a novel model that facilitates the analysis of curriculum documents for those outside the Education discipline. To illustrate the method, the paper provides an example of how and where community gardens align with the content descriptions of the Australian Curriculum. A word frequency analysis suggests that community gardens are most closely aligned with the Humanities and Social Science’s (HASS) and Health and Physical Education (HPE) learning areas. A word tree analysis thematically groups content descriptions and discusses how community gardens can support classroom implementation of both HASS and HPE. The method presented will benefit scholars outside the Education discipline who seek to engage with the curriculum. It also extends discussions surrounding how to best integrate gardens in schools.

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