ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the historicisation of Asia and curriculum in the Australian context from Chapter 2, tracing the period from the 1980s to the 2000s. Its focus is the 1990s and early 2000s, years characterised by the implementation of major federal Asia literacy policies, the global Asian Century discourse, and Australia's national curriculum movement. Through an analysis of the policy effects on Languages and History curricula, the chapter outlines how the increasing enmeshment of Asia curriculum in the Asia literacy policy rhetoric of economics of regional engagement led to a widening gap between policy and practice. The analysis presented in this chapter offers insights into early critiques of the instrumentalism of the Asia cross-curriculum priority in the Australian Curriculum. It challenges the perception of the introduction of the cross-curriculum priority as the pinnacle of Asia literacy by arguing that, as a result of its historical policy legacy, the effective implementation of the cross-curriculum priority was jeopardised from its inception.
