National History Challenge: Asia and Australia
Students from across Australia are invited to submit entries in the AEF sponsored category of Asia and Australia in the National History Challenge. Students can win generous cash prizes and travel opportunities.
Theme: Leadership and Legacy
Closing date for submissions: 21 August 2015
The National History Challenge is an exciting contest that encourages students to use research and inquiry based learning to discover more about the past. Students are the historians. They can investigate their community, explore their own and their family’s past and explore ideas throughout history.
For more information go to the National History Challenge website.
2014 national Asia and Australia category winner
Evan Lee, year 10 student at Barker College, Hornsby NSW, won the Asia and Australia category of the National History Challenge. He was presented with his award by Senator Scott Ryan at the national awards ceremony in Canberra, 2 December, for his excellent essay about Gough Whitlam's Asian foreign policy.
The judges were, '... very impressed by Evan's balanced approach in clearly showing Australia-Asia engagement within the theme of Changing Perspectives. The essay was well-referenced and showed good use of sources and a mature understanding of Whitlam's foreign policy'.
Asia and Australia category guidelines
Alignment to the Australian Curriculum: History
Leadership and Legacy – Asia and Australia
The Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priority of Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia provides opportunities for students to include Asia in the Australian Curriculum for History.
Students are encouraged to look at how Australia-Asia engagement fits in with the 2015 theme of Leadership and Legacy.
Foundation: Personal and family histories
Year 1: Present and past family life within the context of the students’ own world
Year 2: History of students’ local area by examining remains of the past
Year 3: Local and global symbols and emblems of significance, and celebrations and commemorations
Year 4: Exploration and colonisation in Australia up to the early 1800s
Year 5: Colonial life in Australia, important events, individuals, developments in politics and social conditions
Year 6: Development of the Australian nation, democracy and citizenship, migrant contributions
Year 7: Ancient world and the first human communities, from 60,000 BC (BCE) – c.650 AD (CE) such as in China, India and Australia
Year 8: End of the ancient period to start of the modern period, civilisations around the world making contact
Year 9: From 1750–1918, industrialisation, nationalism and imperialism, Australian colonisation, World War I
Year 10: From 1918 to the present, Australia’s development and transformation, relations with the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world