1. Home
  2. Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences (Primary) [HSS6215]

School: Education

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences (Primary)

  • Unit Code

    HSS6215

  • Year

    2026

  • Enrolment Period

    1

  • Version

    1

  • Credit Points

    10

  • Full Year Unit

     N

  • Mode of Delivery

    On Campus
    Online

  • Unit Coordinator

    Mrs Linda CRANLEY

Description

This core unit critically investigates the nature and scope of the Humanities and Social Sciences Learning Area within the context of WA and Australian curriculum documents. Pre-service teachers will analyse the structure, content and use of the current curriculum documents. They will examine inquiry oriented teaching strategies and learning activities for developing conceptual understandings, consider issues based approaches, review Humanities and Social Sciences processes and skills and core values underpinning the learning area. In addition, pre-service teachers will identify and evaluate a range of teaching and learning resources, examine and reflect on assessment in this learning area, and introduce long term planning.

Equivalent Rule

Replaces SSE4215, HSS4215

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Develop an integrated teaching and learning program to achieve Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum requirements.
  2. Identify and apply appropriate techniques to monitor and report on the level of achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area.
  3. Locate and utilise a range of humanities and social sciences resource materials and local community resource locations for effective teaching and learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area.
  4. Explain and justify the nature, scope and role of the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area for Western Australian schools.

Unit Content

  1. Assessment techniques, monitoring processes and reporting procedures for the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area.
  2. Planning and implementing excursions and incursions within a teaching and learning program to address the Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum.
  3. Promoting active citizenship values of democratic process, social justice, and ecological sustainability.
  4. Processes and skills for developing an inquiry to address the curriculum.
  5. Strategies for developing conceptual understandings.
  6. Planning within a framework: Programming and lesson planning.
  7. Resources for teaching the Humanities and Social Sciences (including textual, audio visual, computer software, the Internet, community based and other types of resources).
  8. The Australian Curriculum learning area, Humanities and Social Sciences: rationale, year level descriptions, content descriptors, content elaborations, and achievement standards.
  9. Current curriculum documents in the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area.
  10. Society and environment, social studies, social education, social inquiry and the social sciences: similarities, differences and linkages.

Learning Experience

ON-CAMPUS

Students will attend on campus classes as well as engage in learning activities through ECU's LMS

City CampusJoondalupSouth West (Bunbury)
Semester 2Not Offered10 x 1 hour lectureNot Offered
Semester 2Not Offered10 x 2 hour tutorialNot Offered

For more information see the Semester Timetable

ONLINE

Students will engage in learning experiences via ECU’s LMS as well as additional ECU learning technologies

Additional Learning Experience Information

Lectures and presentations by university staff. Tutorials and small group discussions, workshop activities. Debates, hypotheticals. Reflective practitioner tasks. Use of interactive technology and multimedia learning. Reflective planning

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

ON CAMPUS
TypeDescriptionValue
PresentationTutorial Presentation40%
AssignmentForward Planning Document60%
ONLINE
TypeDescriptionValue
PresentationTutorial Presentation40%
AssignmentForward Planning Document60%

Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

  • Plagiarism: Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).
  • Unauthorised collaboration (collusion): Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).
  • Contract cheating: Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.
  • Cheating in an exam: Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment Procedure - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment Procedure - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

HSS6215|1|1