Table of contents for Vol 61 No 1 2026 in Agora

Walk down any Melbourne laneway and you’ll find them: faint words on bricks, rendered letters on buildings, rusted signs on old shop fronts. Some are little more than pieces, half-erased letters advertising ‘Billiards’, ‘Soap’ or ‘Corsets’, their lead-paint lettering baked into the city’s bones. These are Melbourne’s ghost signs: the fading advertisements that once sold everything from motor oil to milk bars. To most people, they’re curiosities, at best an urban aesthetic. But to students and teachers they are living artefacts—fragments of social, industrial and creative history that exist not behind glass but above cafés, chemists and corner shops. Place-based learning asks students to learn from the places they inhabit—to turn their neighbourhoods into classrooms. Ghost signs make that tangible. They’re history in situ: stories you can point to, photograph…

Humanities teaching goes beyond the classroom to make connections with the local community. This can include organisations such as the local RSL, historical society, or even the cemetery. There are 263 RSL sub-branches in Victoria, with eighty-six offering ‘hospitality’.1 Therefore, it is possible for schools to reach out and create a connection with one of these local RSL sub-branches and work with students to record the stories of local war veterans. In 2024 I formed a community connection between Frankston RSL and John Paul College. A number of activities were developed as a result of this arrangement. • Our Year 12 VCE Vocational Major (VM) students wrote biographies for four different Vietnam veterans. These were collated into a booklet that was published, with copies presented to the veterans in September…

Too often, history is presented as a static timeline, confined to the pages of a textbook. Students have become passive bystanders to an information overload, finding it difficult to connect with dates, events, people and policies that feel distant and abstract. This approach overlooks the ultimate purpose of history: to cultivate critical thinking and empathy through meaningful experiences and interactions. Connecting students with their local and wider communities fosters agency, equity and engagement.1 The goal is to foster informed, empathetic citizens. The question remains: how can students experience tangible and immersive representations of historical knowledge? The answer lies not just in what we teach, but how. Analysing significant events, such as the implementation of the White Australia policy, is crucial to understanding their causes and human consequences. What if we…

When was the last time you felt a part of history? The recent pandemic and subsequent lockdowns gave everyone the feeling that they were living through history. But how do we get that same feeling about the Victorian gold rush, or a World War II concentration camp, or the life of a medieval knight? Excursions are an important part of every student’s learning experience. Site visits provide context to historical events, people and places. They cement ideas, raise questions, challenge assumptions, and even expose students to potential career options. The simple act of getting on a train or visiting a large town might be important emotional and social development opportunities. Historic sites can deliver knowledge, provide useful anecdotes and expand our appreciation of history.1 A visit might not provide immediate…

Victoria stands among the first places in the world to make education free, secular and compulsory. The landmark Education Act 1872 required all children aged 6–15 years to attend school unless they had a reasonable excuse. The Victorian Department of Education celebrated this milestone with the 150 Years of Public Education campaign. However, the histories and photographs collected for the 2022 anniversary represent only a fraction of the story. Behind the scenes, a large-scale project is underway. School records from across Victoria are being transferred to the archives of Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), described, and made accessible so the community can learn from these historical records. This article goes behind the scenes of the project and looks at what the PROV team are doing and how they are preserving…

What Is Place-Based Boston? Place-Based Boston (PBB) is a collaboration between nonprofit and National Park Service historic sites in downtown Boston, offering teachers and students opportunities to deepen their historical knowledge of the city, including the events that took place there during the American Revolution.1 As project coordinator from 2016–2018, I honed my knowledge of Boston’s role in the American Revolution through the extensive resources available from partner sites, including maps, newspapers, archival documents and artefacts. Many of these resources are now integral to my teaching of VCE Revolutions in an attempt to replicate some of the benefits of learning in place. The resources help students explore how colonial Boston’s geographic and built environment influenced the citizenry, government, culture and economy, and how they contributed to the Revolution. Furthermore, they…

With a legislated treaty with Victoria’s First Peoples now in place, the manner in which our national history is taught is once again under close scrutiny. The treaty process involves a commitment to truth-telling about the origins of the Australian federation, the historical and ongoing nature of dispossession, and its connection to other forms of social exclusion that have marked the national story. These are challenging topics that teachers of VCE Australian History are well aware of as they teach the development of modern Australia in the historical investigations ‘Creating a Nation’ and ‘Power and Resistance’. These are also challenges for those who write this history. How do we properly account for the realities of dispossession and racist exclusion and the manner in which they shaped the Australian story? And…

‘Take a photo of the cliffs for me, will you?’ This was my father’s only request last year when I travelled to Gallipoli, Türkiye. As a life-long history enthusiast, he didn’t care for the typical souvenirs of Turkish delight and patterned ceramics. He just wanted to see for himself the rugged terrain faced by the Australian Imperial Force at Anzac Cove when they landed on 25 April 1915. My trip to Gallipoli was not one of personal leisure. I was travelling as a teacher chaperone on the 2025 Premier’s Spirit of Anzac Prize study tour, which selects twelve young Victorians each year to travel abroad and learn about the service and sacrifice of Australians throughout World War I.1 While I was already honoured to have been selected for this annual…

History teaching in the primary years is uniquely positioned to take advantage of place-based learning. By engaging directly with meaningful places of history, the abstract can be transformed into tangible reality for our youngest learners. Place-based learning provides opportunities for students to engage in real-time observation and authentic engagement with historical sites and experts, while engaging all their senses in an experiential and immersive learning experience. Nestled on the NSW–Victorian border on the banks of the Murray River, the historic town of Echuca exemplifies local history in action, providing an excellent base from which place-based learning can be enacted. Beginning as an important cultural hub for the Yorta Yorta people prior to European settlement, evolving to a bustling transport hub in the 1870s (when it was the third largest port…

1. Whose Country do you live and teach on? 2. What do you know about the histories, cultures and perspectives of the Traditional Owners and First Nations communities who maintain deep connections to this Country and Place? 3. What will you need to learn to teach about these connections and histories in primary Humanities? These are some of the questions we use to frame primary Humanities units for pre-service teachers, who then engage in place-based learning on Country. This approach aligns with cultural protocols from the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Inc. (VAEAI), which state, ‘Local Koorie cultural and historical content should be a priority focus’.1 It also embeds the organising idea of Country and Place from the revised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority in the…