New directions in intercultural early education in Australia

Early education in Australia encompasses both early education and care(ECEC) and the early years of school. Educational approaches to cultural and linguistic diversity have varied not only by sector but also by jurisdiction based on distinct curriculum frameworks and policies. In Australian early education, provision for cultural and linguistic diversity has been framed largely by multicultural discourse, as defined by a complex history of progressive, yet often superficial reforms. Current initiatives serve to change this trajectory and the positioning of stakeholders. The incorporation of intercultural rather than multicultural approaches offers new possibilities for early education and directs attention to real challenges for ECEC. They re-position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the First Australians, and direct attention to both Australia’s social, cultural and linguistic diversity and to the role of early childhood educators in enacting more inclusive pedagogies. Challenges yet to be addressed include the cultural understanding of Australian early childhood educators, particularly those who identify as Anglo- Australian, deeper policy enactment in pedagogic practice and negotiation with diverse families and communities. This paper will address the historical and current policy contexts of intercultural early education in Australia, the development of intercultural initiatives, and emerging issues as national policies are introduced. The discussion draws on responses to intercultural early education in New Zealand and Canada to consider approaches to intercultural priorities in Australia. The paper will attend predominantly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives as a core element of change in Australian early childhood policy, focusing on ECEC.

Towards an international approach for geography education

"Geography education is indispensable to the development of responsible and active citizens in the present and future world" is one of the main statements in the International Charter on Geographical Education. This charter was edited in 1992 by Haubrich, chair of the Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union (IGU). Twenty years later this statement is still true. Geography educators all over the world are looking for ways to talk with young people about their image of their world and to help them to develop their knowledge, skills and ideas about the complex world we live in. However, different ideas exist about what geography we should learn and teach and how. The Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union tries to help to improve the quality and position of geography education worldwide promoting the dissemination of good practices and research results in the field of geography education.

Intercultural competence in engineering education : who are we teaching?

BACKGROUND There is little doubt that our engineering graduates’ ability to identify cultural differences and their potential to impact on engineering projects, and to work effectively with these differences is of key importance in the modern engineering practice. Within engineering degree programs themselves there is also a significant need to recognise the impact of changing student and staff profiles on what happens in the classroom. The research described in this paper forms part of a larger project exploring issues of intercultural competence in engineering. PURPOSE This paper presents an observational and survey study of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students from four institutions working in groups on tasks with a purely technical focus, or with a cultural and humanitarian element. The study sought to explore how students rate their own intercultural competence and team process and whether any differences exist depending on the nature of the task they are working on. We also investigated whether any differences were evident between groups of first year, second year and postgraduate students. DESIGN/METHOD The study used the miniCQS instrument (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008) and a Bales Interaction Process Analysis based scale (Bales, 1950; Carney, 1976) to collect students self ratings of group process, task management, and cultural experience and behaviour. The Bales IPA was also used for coding video observations of students working in groups. Survey data were used to form descriptive variables to compare outcomes across the different tasks and contexts. Observations analysed in Nvivo were used to provide commentary and additional detail on the quantitative data. RESULTS The results of the survey indicated consistent mean scores on each survey item for each group of students, despite vastly different tasks, student backgrounds and educational contexts. Some small, statistically significant mean differences existed, offering some basic insights into how task and student group composition could affect self ratings. Overall though, the results suggest minimal shift in how students view group function and their intercultural experience, irrespective of differing educational experience. CONCLUSIONS The survey results, contrasted with group observations, indicate that either students are not translating their experience (in the group tasks) into critical self assessment of their cultural competence and teamwork, or that they become more critical of team performance and cultural competence as their competence in these areas grows, so their ratings remain consistent. Both outcomes indicate that students need more intensive guidance to build their critical self and peer assessment skills in these areas irrespective of their year level of study.

Intercultural Dialogues in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability : Embedding Indigenous Perspectives

Embedding Indigenous perspectives in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) upholds social and political action goals that support a holistic approach to promoting sustainability in educational contexts. Such goals should be responsive to particular contexts and their histories to ensure local issues are a focus of sustainability alongside global areas of concern. This chapter explores how intercultural dialogues and priorities foreground broader themes of sustainability that attend to local issues around culture and diversity, and equity in relations between groups of people. Attending to such themes in educational practice unsettles a standard environmental narrative and broadens the scope and potential for ECEfS in early years settings. Strengthening intercultural priorities in ECEfS requires a commitment to reflective practices that attend to the influence of one's cultural background on teaching and learning processes. Educators committed to reflective practices provide even greater capacity for children to act as change agents (Davis, 2008, 2010) around multiple dimensions of sustainability.

Intercultural conversation : building understanding together

Classroom talk has long been recognised as central to student learning. Efforts are made therefore to 'stretch', 'extend' or 'push' English-language learners' (ELLS') linguistic and conceptual development by promoting more complex instructional talk. Conversation is a two-way activity, yet the focus is often directed to the ELL. To address this gap, this article suggests ideas for developing the capabilities of all students -- ELLS or otherwise -- for instructional conversations in mainstream classrooms where English is used by some as a first or only language, and by others as a second language.

Fostering cultural awareness in pre-service teacher education : an experiment in Asia literacy capacity building in an Australian university

This paper presents the findings of a small pilot study conducted with a group of final year pre-service teachers studying a secondary social science curriculum method unit in an Australian university. One of the study’s research objectives aimed at identifying how students responded to efforts to embed intercultural understanding through Studies of Asia in their final curriculum method unit. The unit was designed and taught by the researcher on the assumption that beginning social science teachers need to be empowered with pedagogical skills and new dispositions to deal with value laden emerging regional and global concerns in their Australian secondary school classrooms. This pilot study’s research methodology was located within the qualitative framework of a participatory action research model whereby the lecturer who designed, coordinated and taught the unit was also the researcher. Its scope was limited to one semester with volunteer students. The pilot study sought to investigate responses to several issues, and this paper reports on pre-service teacher reflections on the content, pedagogy and learning they experienced in their weekly sessions with specific reference to cultural understanding, Studies of Asia and the development of Asia literacy. It also reports on pre-service teacher reflections about their own evolving capacity as beginning teachers. The findings indicate that pre-service teachers valued the opportunity to engage with learning experiences which enhanced their conceptual understandings about culture whilst also extending their pedagogical and content knowledge.

Producing the intercultural citizen in the International Baccalaureate

The International Baccalaureate Diploma (IBD) is currently offered in 2,718 schools across 138 countries, and explicitly aims to produce ‘internationally-minded’ citizens with a sense of belonging to both the local and the global community. It thus offers an opportunity to enquire how a school curriculum might produce more intercultural or global dispositions, knowledge and skills, and the challenges inherent in such design. To frame this empirical enquiry, the chapter distinguishes between the fact of living together in difference as a life circumstance, and a range of ethical dispositions for such living together, including cosmopolitanism, internationalism, interculturality and global citizenship. These alternatives are understood as competing social imaginaries with different premises and logics. This chapter offers an empirical exploration of how the IBD’s curricular goal of ‘international-mindedness’ is interpreted firstly in current official documents, then reinterpreted by teachers and students in three case study schools in Australia. Traces of these overlapping but distinct discourses are found in the teachers’ recontextualisation of the IBD’s ‘internationalmindedness’ producing diffuse and contradictory versions of what ‘internationalmindedness’ means, and looks like in educational settings.

Exploring intercultural competence : a service-learning approach

This study explored the developing intercultural competence of fourth-year Australian education pre-service teachers through a core unit of study on inclusive education, following a service-learning pathway. The Australian pre-service teachers volunteered to be 'of service' to a cohort of second-year Malaysian pre-service teachers studying in Australia in a transnational twinning program. Students participated in a Patches program which included writing 'patches' (reflections) and engaging in social exchanges. Data were gathered from focus group interviews, written reflection logs and Patches writing books and were analysed through Butin's (2005) four-lenses of service-learning: technical, cultural, political and post-modern lenses. Data revealed that initially the Australian pre-service teachers felt their presumptions but by the end of the semester embraced the basic tenants of inclusion and were able to project how they could take their new understandings into the classroom as inclusive teachers.

Learning English in an English speaking world : examining opportunities for intercultural understandings and connectedness through representations of identities in English language textbooks

With the recognition that language both reflects and constructs culture and English now widely acknowledged as an international language, the cul-tural content of language teaching materials is now being problematised. Through a quantitative analysis, this chapter focuses on opportunities for intercultural understanding and connectedness through representations of the identities that appear in two leading English language textbooks. The analyses reveal that the textbooks orientate towards British and western identities with representations of people from non-European/non-Western backgrounds being notable for their absence, while others are hidden from view. Indeed there would appear to be a neocolonialist orientation in oper-ation in the textbooks, one that aligns English with the West. The chapter proposes arguments for the consideration of cultural diversity in English language teaching (ELT) textbook design, and promoting intercultural awareness and acknowledging the contexts in which English is now being used. It also offers ways that teachers can critically reflect on existing ELT materials and proposes arguments for including different varieties of Eng-lish in order to ensure a level of intercultural understanding and connect-edness.

International pre-service teachers' self-confidence in critical reflective thinking and writing through an intercultural Patches program

This paper describes part of an action research study that was designed to explore the outcomes of an ongoing program in which the participants, a group of domestic and international pre-service teachers and lecturers, worked together in reflective writing workshops. While the primary long-term goal of the program was to develop the intercultural competence and understanding of all of the participants through social activities, the development of social relationships was initiated and supported by involving the participants in weekly writing workshops that focused on shared salient skills of critical reflective thinking and writing. The focus of this paper is upon the outcomes for the international students, a cohort of second year pre-service teachers from Malaysia. Findings indicated that the program was successful in developing the Malaysian pre-service teachers’ self-confidence in perceiving themselves as writers and future teachers of writing, in shifting their focus from writing product to writing process and content, and in increasing the depth of their critical reflective thinking and writing

Intercultural usability of language learning websites

Website usability can be defined as the ease of use of websites. General usability, pedagogical usability, technical usability and intercultural usability can be considered and examined for the understanding of the usability of language learning websites, which requires a discipline-specific approach. In the field of computer-assisted language learning, usability issues have been addressed mainly in terms of evaluation criteria and have been commonly discussed in relation to user expectations and user experiences. In spite of a growing interest in intercultural language learning, however, little research on intercultural usability of language learning websites has been published yet. There is a need to answer the question of how language learning websites integrate the target language and culture for the development of intercultural sensitivity and competence. This article explores intercultural aspects of language learning websites and presents usability guidelines for designing intercultural language learning websites.

Engineering across cultures : new learning resources for intercultural competency in engineering

BACKGROUND The work described in this paper has emerged from an ALTC/OLT funded project, Exploring Intercultural Competency in Engineering. The project indentified many facets of culture and intercultural competence that go beyond a culture-as-nationality paradigm. It was clear from this work that resources were needed to help engineering educators introduce students to the complex issues of culture as they relate to engineering practice. A set of learning modules focussing on intercultural competence in engineering practice were developed early on in the project. Through the OLT project, these modules have been expanded into a range of resources covering various aspects of culture in engineering. Supporting the resources, an eBook detailing the ins and outs of intercultural competency has also been developed to assist engineering educators to embed opportunities for students to develop skills in unpacking and managing cross-cultural challenges in engineering practice. PURPOSE This paper describes the key principles behind the development of the learning modules, the areas they cover and the eBook developed to support the modules. The paper is intended as an introduction to the approaches and resources and extends an invitation to the community to draw from, and contribute to this initial work. DESIGN/METHOD A key aim of this project was to go beyond the culture-as-nationality approach adopted in much of the work around intercultural competency (Deardorff, 2011). The eBook explores different dimensions of culture such as workplace culture, culture’s influence on engineering design, and culture in the classroom. The authors describe how these connect to industry practice and explore what they mean for engineering education. The packaged learning modules described here have been developed as a matrix of approaches moving from familiar known methods through complicated activities relying to some extent on expert knowledge. Some modules draw on the concept of ‘complex un-order’ as described in the ‘Cynefin domains’ proposed by Kurtz and Snowden (2003). RESULTS Several of the modules included in the eBook have already been trialled at a variety of institutions. Feedback from staff has been reassuringly positive so far. Further trials are planned for second semester 2012, and version 1 of the eBook and learning modules, Engineering Across Cultures, is due to be released in late October 2012. CONCLUSIONS The Engineering Across Cultures eBook and learning modules provide a useful and ready to employ resource to help educators tackle the complex issue of intercultural competency in engineering education. The book is by no means exhaustive, and nor are the modules, they instead provide an accessible, engineering specific guide to bringing cultural issues into the engineering classroom.