Focus areas and optional areas

Focus and optional areas provide a rich context to consider big questions and examine competing tensions. Competing tensions can apply to more than one area.

Teachers are required to teach both focus areas 1 and 2, and must choose one optional topic listed below for exploring the questions and tensions:

• Focus area 1: Sources of law
• Focus area 2: Dispute resolution
• Optional area 1: The constitution
• Optional area 2: When rights collide.

Teachers should focus on the following issues when planning for each focus and optional area:

• development of big questions to frame inquiry, engagement, and learning
• development of inquiry questions to focus research
• connection to the competing tensions of:
  • rights and responsibilities
  • fairness and efficiency
  • the empowered and the disempowered
  • certainty and flexibility
• current/relevant structures and processes
• current legislation 
• relevant cases 
• a variety of contemporary sources
• engagement with the capabilities
• consideration of assessment including the specific feature(s) to be addressed
• time allocation.

Why do we use the concept of competing tensions, big questions, and inquiry questions?

Competing tensions articulate the diametrically opposed ideals that laws are designed to resolve. Laws and legal institutions are formed with the purpose of striking a balance between these ideals in a way that satisfies the community. Competing tensions exemplify why reasonable people can have different opinions about legal issues and show the importance of critical thinking in Legal Studies.

Big questions encourage learner agency and curiosity. They are a mechanism to stimulate deep thinking, analysis and evaluation, and the consideration of a range of perspectives. Big questions require a judgement, a point of view, and an argument.

These questions are open-ended and require research into legal principles, processes, evidence, and cases to provide the material to support discussion and a synthesised conclusion. One or more competing tensions may be evident in a big question.

Inquiry questions arise from the deconstruction of big questions into smaller research questions. Inquiry questions are content specific and often require a factual response. Answers to the inquiry question provide the building blocks for a big question response.

An example of how this is done is provided after Optional area 2.