Earth and Environmental Science: Unpacking the Curriculum and Teachers' Dispositions

There are currently a range of complexities and problems influencing the quality of senior secondary Earth science education in Australian schools. These include students’ disengagement with the curriculum, and concerns regarding teachers’ preparedness to engage students in quality Earth science learning. Compounding these problems is the introduction of a new Earth and Environmental Science curriculum that will be implemented in Queensland in 2019. This curriculum document merges two disparate fields of science and is very different to the existing curriculum in that it privileges knowledge of sustainable development and natural resource management over knowledge of mining practices and minerals processing. Given this context, there is a need for research on Earth science teachers’ attitude toward teaching sustainable development, and how their attitude mediates the intended and enacted Earth and Environmental Science curriculum. This research, therefore, aims to critically analyse the Earth and Earth and Environmental Science curriculum and explore senior secondary Earth science teachers’ attitude toward teaching sustainable development, with a view to understand how they mediate the intended and enacted curriculum.