Locating Australia? How students view Australia’s region

This article analyses views of Australia’s region expressed by 427 students enrolled in the pre-degree programme at the University of Tasmania over the three years from 2015 to 2017. This set of students participated in an inter-disciplinary unit titled ‘Understanding this Region’, for which the author was the unit coordinator. The results derive from an assessment task designed for this unit, which asked students to find a map that matched their understanding of this region, and to justify their choice. The article analyses students’ choices of ‘this region’ disclosed by this assignment, and thereby their perspectives on situating Australia. It considers how far students identified with the Pacific, local and oceanic connections, and how far with Asia; and the reasons they gave for their choices. The article then considers the significance of these findings, given that the Australian national curriculum emphasises the importance of engagement with Asia.