Feral Focus

ACT Science curriculum framework - trial draft 2006

Student outcomes and links to relevant activities

Feral Focus links directly to the following essential learning achievements and is designed for secondary students up to year 10.

Early adolescence band of development - Science

Essential Learning Achievement

Students understand and learn about:

Students learn to:

Students develop values and attitudes about:

Activity

18 - The student understands and applies scientific knowledge

Living things

  • food chains and webs as models of relationships within communities or systems, and flow of energy through a system

  • relationships between progress in science and social issues and priorities, and the impacts of scientific advances on society (e.g. water purification, new energy sources, space exploration, biotechnology)

  • identify and describe relationships, and explain and predict change

  • apply scientific knowledge and scientific language in forming explanations, arguments and lines of reasoning

  • apply scientific knowledge in considering current issues and problems and suggesting creative solutions

  • the usefulness of scientific knowledge in everyday life (e.g. its value in considering health, safety and environmental consequences of decisions and actions)

  • science as a potentially rewarding career

19 - The student acts for an environmentally sustainable future

  • some processes by which human activities effect changes to natural environments (e.g. erosion, deforestation, tourism, urbanisation)

  • how some natural systems (e.g. National Parks) are managed sustainably by humans for future generations

  • conflicting values and interests of different groups in caring for a place

  • demonstrate positive environmental behaviour by taking some individual or class action to support an environmental issue, including participating in raising awareness about the issue, and assess the results of their action

  • the need to preserve the diversity of Australian and world ecosystems for future generations

  • being informed and proactive about local, national and global issues that will determine how the future might be

  • the need for individual and collective cooperative action to support desired outcomes

Later adolescence band of development - Science

Essential Learning Achievement

Students understand and learn about:

Students learn to:

Students develop values and attitudes about:

Activity

19 - The student acts for an environmentally sustainable future

  • environments as complex systems encompassing ecological, socio-economic, cultural and political components, and how changes to any part of them interact to affect the function of the environment as a whole

  • how peoples' views on the environment influence government policy and non-government organisations and ways in which governments attempt to address issues of development and sustainability

  • use scientific concepts and models (e.g. understanding the nature of systems) to predict the consequences of changes to an ecosystem

  • examine examples of individual and global actions to create sustainable futures, assess the relative strengths and limitations of those actions and propose other appropriate responses to develop sustainability

  • investigate practical and real-life environmental issues by identifying the probable futures with current actions, generating preferred futures and assessing the merits of possible actions that could be taken to support sustainability

  • apply relevant scientific understandings to make responsible, ethical and informed decisions about issues about sustainability

  • the need to make decisions and choices about the development of natural ecosystems that will preserve them for future generations

  • the roles individuals and groups can play as active and informed members of society, to create environments in the future that are positive and sustainable