The Mirror Shield Project by Cannupa Hanska Luger serves as the focus of this unit's learning sequence together with its lesson plan since it combines Indigenous perspectives with environmental activism and visual representation (CannupaHanska, 2025). This artefact demonstrates powerful alignment with the school's inquiry question about the ways art facilitates environmental reflection and resistance and protection of communities. This artifact serves as an outstanding opportunity for upper primary students to engage with sustainability studies through multiple arts approaches.
Research by UCSC (2022) supports the selection of Mirror Shield Project as the key artefact to demonstrate how arts can foster sustainability education transformation. Art demonstrates its dual role as an expressive medium while serving as a social action linked to environmental causes. The project utilizes Indigenous perspectives which show how people connect to territory through oneness while offering students experiences of safeguarding the environment and making direct social change and becoming accountable. Students learn about the diverse perspectives of First Nations environmental resistance because the Mirror Shield presents both its artistic value and cultural depth (ACARA, 2018). The learning activities comply with the cross-curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures by developing ethical and intercultural understanding.
The educational design intertwines the Arts with Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) and implements two cross-curriculum priorities which include Sustainability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures. The educational capabilities from the Australian Curriculum which receive support are Critical and Creative Thinking along with Personal and Social Capability and Ethical Understanding (ACARA, 2024). The entire unit places authentic learning at its center maintains authentic tasks enable students to connect with genuine real-life matters and perspectives therefore allowing effective student engagement.
The learning experience integrates education about sustainability together with Indigenous activism and extends to require students to create artwork that expresses their learning. Students participate in critical making through creating mirror shields to develop creative outputs that represent their social and environmental values (shabbir, 2024). The pedagogical method which Clifton & Grushka (2022) defined as art-as-action enables learners to shift from empathetic understanding to active participation. The shield-making performance along with messaging and display creates protector mechanisms which allow youngsters to develop self-assurance and become civic activists.
An inquiry-based constructivist learning sequence allows students to build knowledge through the combination of exploration and reflective dialogue (Lutheran Education Queensland, 2007). Student learning receives fostering support in this lesson through methods that include powerful presentations of artwork as well as group-based assessment activities and step-by-step creative assignments and self-direction sessions. Visual arts education remains central to this unit design because it enables students to explore symbolism through multiple communication methods. According to Stavridi, (2015) students find in the arts spaces that enable imaginative processing of complex ideas as they create forms of communication that go beyond text. Students require special attention to abstract concepts including justice as well as protest movements and environmental responsibility alongside them. The unit functions under a base of culturally responsive pedagogy. Through Cannupa Hanska Luger's project the unit introduces Indigenous perspectives which promote learning with deep respect combined with curiosity and empathy. This method helps refute the deficiencies of deficit thinking while creating the educational crossroads that labeled as the “cultural interface.”
To help students get the most out of studying colonization, protest and environmental duties, abstract ideas must be supported by systematic planning. Visual arts supply a safe way for people to creatively share these messages (Dinham, 2022). Teachers should have access to fitting resources and training to help them value and include Indigenous knowledge (Wooltorton et al., 2020). Having emotional literacy and civic responsibility as parts of the sequence enables students to develop agency better. Henderson and Tudball (2016) believe students need opportunities to engage in communities to boost their awareness, confidence and learning about right and wrong.
This unit offers students ways to act as creative and aware promoters of change. Through this program, young people learn to transform feelings of sadness about the environment into useful actions (Burde & King, 2023). Combining arts, HASS and English gives students an opportunity for rich cross-subject learning, encourages understanding between people from different cultures and develops sustainability thinking (Preston, 2015). Because media literacy uses more than just words, it can support all kinds of learning and help people feel included (Dinham & Chalk, 2022). Because of these experiences, students start seeing values more clearly and feel like they belong in their community.
The topic of colonization and activism need to be treated with care when implementing this unit. Teachers need to honor Indigenous points of view by talking to local Indigenous groups and not use stories that focus on problems (QED, 2024). Trying to balance course material from different subjects is often tough, so planning and integrating them is necessary (Everett et al., 2009). Evaluation in creative work requires you to take into account what students intended, the symbols they relied upon and also their thoughts, not only the work’s final shape. Keeping the lessons meaningful and relevant while preventing overwhelm or disrespect for different cultures is very important for everyone’s safety and the learning experience.
The sustainability inquiry engages students through Mirror Shield Project as it prompts them to explore relationships between creative practice and cultural knowledge and protective measures and resistance strategies. The unit implements necessary curriculum outcomes together with capabilities and implements integrated learning across disciplines that enhances ethical and cultural understanding alongside environmental awareness. The resource demonstrates that Arts and Humanities education transforms students into critical problem solvers who develop empathy toward their environment to imagine and execute change.
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