Sustainability Cross Curriculum Priority

The sustainability cross curriculum priority is an integral part of the Australian Curriculum.
Integrating this CCP allows students to become increasingly informed members of society.
Within the context of Technologies, sustainability gives students authentic contexts to
create and design for the future. The ‘Sustainable food packaging’ design brief requires
students to draw on their knowledge of sustainability in order to design environmentally
friendly strawberry packaging. Through the knowledge learnt in introductory lessons, such
as the one used, students will identify the problem that waste has on the environment. They
will then generate ideas and create solutions to this problem.

The Organising Ideas of the Sustainability CCP include the ideas that sustainability is
achieved through informed and active individuals and communities, that designing for
sustainability involves looking to the past, drawing from science and technology and taking
into consideration economic, social and environmental impacts and that a sustainable
future will be the result of actions designed to restore and preserve the environment. The
design brief addresses these organising ideas by inviting students to take become informed
and take actions that will create solutions that enhance sustainability. Knowledge is
developed during early lessons that allow students to generate ideas in following lessons.

Both the design brief and lesson plan have their foundations in sustainability and in
particular, with the sustainability CCP. They act as a valuable opportunity for students to
expand their understanding of sustainability as a whole so that they can implement it in
their lives.

References

School Curriculum and Standard Authority. (2014). Western Australian curriculum. Retrieved
from https://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/p-10-curriculum/curriculum-browser