Interrogating the development of the Australian Curriculum Civics and Citizenship: an assemblage study

This study interrogates the development of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (ACCC) from an ontological perspective, reconceptualising the curriculum-making process as an emergent assemblage made through negotiated politics. Using a thinking-with-theory approach, I examine how the complex conditions of creation shaped the expression of the Civics and Citizenship (CC) curriculum. Significantly, this study found these conditions produced an increasing use of standardisation and centralisation of the curriculum design that became embedded in the details of the ACCC, creating a narrower version of democratic citizenship education. From this assemblage insight, I consider the impact on current and future CC curricula.