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Hickling-Hudson, Anne (2003) Multicultural Education and the Postcolonial Turn. Policy Futures in
Education 1(2):381 -401.
Multicultural Education and the Postcolonial Turn.
Anne Hickling Hudson
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Policy Futures in Education, Vol 1 No. 2, pp. 381 – 401.
Introduction: Postcolonial rethinking
The assumptions which the educational system inherited from the era of European
colonialism, and modified during the era of decolonisation, are currently facing
postcolonial challenges. In this paper, I consider how multicultural education and
postcolonial rethinking might lead educators and students to change traditional school
contexts and curricula. The issues that I discuss focus on Australia, but also apply more
broadly to countries with culturally diverse populations.
Why choose multiculturalism as the focus of my paper, and why postcolonialism as an
approach for analysing it? To start with multiculturalism, I want to draw attention to the
conceptual map of emphases in multicultural research and teaching proposed by Bennett
(2001: 175), which includes four ‘genre clusters’: curriculum reform, equity pedagogy,
multicultural competence and societal equity. This comprehensive approach provides a
culturally embedded vision for improving pedagogies. Across such genre clusters,
multicultural education has provided a clear alternative to monocultural discourses of
education. Moving from such oppressive discourses, it can inspire education that opens doors
to exciting developments in knowledge and insights, although researchers have suggested that
policies at the official level use multicultural education as a palliative rather than for social
change (Sachs and Poole, 1989). As a field, multicultural education has room for
improvement when it becomes broadened by specific postcolonial perspectives. Multicultural
pedagogies informed by postcolonialism can fashion intellectual and attitudinal tools to help
redress the cultural inequities that deepen social injustices.
Postcolonial theory provides a framework which helps to address questions of why so many
curriculum practices appear still so far away from reaching or even recognising the goals of
socio-cultural equity in Bennett’s conceptual map. This is a starting point for working out
strategies of change. The framework highlights an appreciation of the powerful effects which
European and later North American global dominance through colonialism and imperialism
had on learning and education. Some object to developments in postcolonial theory on
grounds that we should not be defining our current experiences in relation to a system that has
long gone. But as Willinsky (1998) points out, the educational legacies of imperialism live on
strongly within us and within our institutions. For example, we continue to place boundaries
around human groups by the idea of ‘culture’ which, with its 19th century roots, carries within
it the residues of beliefs about race and nation which so benefited the Europeans (Willinsky
1999). Most people don’t consider themselves racist, yet still believe in the discredited 18th
century ideas that humans are biologically divided into ‘races’ such as Caucasian, Negro,
Malay and Mongol, and that there is some inherent overlap between race and culture. ‘None
of us lives untouched by colonisation, the extraordinary ordinariness of whiteness, the cultural
constructions of Other, or as part of an insulated and isolated island mass’ (Crowley 1999).
We continue putting our children for the whole of their childhood and adolescence into
schools organised along 19th century lines of age-grading, subject fragmentation and
psychological manipulation. We continue to require students to specialise in Western modes
of knowledge and give them little or no opportunity to explore alternative epistemologies (see
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Hickling-Hudson 2002, in press). In other words, discourses of neo-colonialism are extremely
deep-rooted and difficult to change. Since these legacies live on, it is appropriate that
“Postcolonial critique focuses on forces of oppression and coercive domination that operate in
the contemporary world: the politics of anti-colonialism and neo-colonialism, race, gender,
nationalisms, class and ethnicities define its terrain” (Young 2001, p. 11). While other
perspectives also challenge oppressive traditions, postcolonial theory systematises the
challenge in a framework that takes into account the strength of neo-colonial formations. It
gives us a hybrid conceptual language, drawing on discourse theory as well as vocabularies of
social justice, for analysing the ambiguities and ambivalence of change, recognising the
epistemologies which underlie our practices. ‘Postcolonialising’ involves us in developing
identities and strategies that help to leave constricting neo-colonial ideas and practices behind.
In most societies, schooling is very deeply influenced by contesting discourses of cultural
diversity, which embody both neo-colonial and decolonising histories. My paper considers
these discourses as sites of interrogation in schooling in Australia, as an example of a society
which is multicultural but predominantly ‘white’. It briefly outlines the characteristics of
cultural diversity in Australia, and it considers school cultures in terms of their development
along a continuum. The proposition is that at one end of the continuum is the model of what I
refer to as the culturally problematic school – one in which there is a predominance of
unexamined practices of ethnocentrism and racism which cause problems in the school
community. Schools, however, are continually absorbing changes in their cultural policies.
These can move them further along the continuum towards culturally progressive academic
and social practices characterising what I call the interculturally proactive school. I look at
some of the signs that multicultural education in the proactive school may be evolving in a
postcolonial way, suggesting that postcolonial perspectives would have significant
implications for challenging and changing the traditional culture of schools and colleges.
Multicultural contexts
In the predominantly ‘white’ societies of the European diaspora in the USA, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand, that have both practised colonialism and have been shaped by it,
populations are inevitably characterised by immense cultural diversity. They consist of
indigenous people and of the descendants of the Europeans who displaced and dispossessed
indigenous people in the colonial adventure. They also consist of waves of migrants from all
over the globe, who augmented this population of the European invaders and settlers.
‘Australia has a population of just over eighteen million, of whom four million were born
overseas…. In the last 50 years, over five million people have migrated to Australia’
(Partington 2001: 184). People descended from British migrants still today make up about 70
percent of the population of 18 million. Another 20 percent consists of migrants from
northern, southern and eastern Europe. About eight percent are ‘Asians’ and ‘others’, and
indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise two percent. These broad
categories can be further categorised into over 100 ethnic groups, which speak about 80
languages between them (see Jupp quoted by Megalogenis, 2002). An ethnic profile of a
nation is, of course, a very incomplete social map. Ethnic groups are usually inter-ethnic
through intermarriage and interaction, and are diverse in many respects including wealth and
poverty, youth and age, urban and rural, all of which have to be recognised in social analysis.
The Australian Federal government has identified specific dimensions of multicultural policy,
and education is expected to help students develop all of these. They include civic duty (the
obligation to support the Australian constitution and democratic institutions), cultural respect,
social equity and ‘productive diversity’, the maximising of the cultural and socio-economic
benefits which arise from the diversity of the population (National Multicultural Advisory
Council, 1999, pp.9-10). These official statements of multiculturalism mask an uneasy
ambivalence in Australia’s personality. On one hand, up to about 100,000 migrants a year are
allowed entry (they have to meet stringent selection criteria which favours the young, the
skilled and the well-educated, especially those fluent in English), and there is a quota for
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refugees. On the other hand, some show a fear that the society is being flooded by ‘Asians’,
and hostile paranoia against the unfortunate asylum seekers who seek refuge in Australia’s
shores. These contesting discourses are commented on by Sheridan (2002: 10-11) who
observes: ‘Most migrants still find Australia a welcoming place. Most of us still rejoice in our
diversity. At the same time, we practise systematic cruelty against the most vulnerable people
in our care, and this cruelty excites warm electoral support’. It is this coexistence of outward-
looking multiculturalism and Anglophile xenophobia which leads some to praise Australia for
having one of the most successful and tolerant multicultural societies in the world, and others
to criticise it for its hostile treatment of some ethnic groups (see Smolizc 1997, Arnold 1997).
Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, about 2 percent of the
population of 18 million, resist being treated as just another culture in the multicultural model
of Australian society. They assert their right to be regarded as a special group in Australia –
not just one of the many minority cultures, but the only group that developed within the
Australian continent. Their shaping of the continent’s environment and social relations and
expressive culture for at least 60,000 years – long before Europe was even conceptualised –
represents a dynamic cultural legacy that is of immense importance to modern Australia. Yet,
the history of invasion and settlement with its racist colonialism so savagely excluded and
marginalised indigenous people that they still suffer deeply. They have the highest levels of
unemployment in the society (23 percent compared to a 9 percent average - AusStats 1999a),
and a much greater burden of ill-health and social dislocation than the rest of the population.
Many Indigenous people are successfully seizing the spaces in modern political culture to
strive for improving the material and social conditions of their communities. ‘Reconciliation’
is the public slogan which sets out the ideal that Indigenous and White Australians should
work together to overcome the divisions of the past, while ‘multiculturalism’ is the slogan
that aims at achieving overall intercultural diversity within a framework of shared values.
In societies as culturally diverse as Australia, schools as sites for analysis provide at least
three types of ethnic profile. Some schools have a preponderance of indigenous students,
others have a multicultural mix of ethnic groups including white ethnicities, and some have a
preponderance of students of British and European descent. Whatever the ethnic profile of the
school, there is an official requirement that the curriculum should be multicultural, to prepare
students for living in a multicultural society and a globalising world. But how is
‘multicultural’ to be understood, given the contesting discourses of ethnicity characterising
this complex diversity of cultures? There is the discourse of White Australia, proud of its
achievements in creating a European-derived modern society in the Asia-Pacific region, and
defending itself against what it sees as increasing threats that this achievement might be
displaced by ‘alien’ traditions. As Singh (2000:115) points out, ‘In Australia Whiteness plus
nationality are still (mis)taken by some to equal Australianness’. There is the discourse of
‘Cosmopolitics’ which sees Australia as an exciting mixture of cultural diversity which
enriches the entire society (see Singh, Teacher Learning Network), and which promotes the
idea of ‘thinking and feeling beyond the nation’ (Cheah and Robbins 1998). There is
Indigenous discourse, which claims the special place of Indigenous culture in making
Australia utterly unique, and struggles for both cultural recognition and socio-economic
equity. These discourses are evident in the structure and curriculum of Australian schools.
The culturally problematic school
Official policy of the Commonwealth of Australia is multicultural, and this is given sincere
emphasis in goals for education. But is hard to change the monocultural, ethnocentric
tradition in schools. The kind of school which, from a postcolonial perspective, I see as
‘culturally problematic’ is one in which the school’s culture uncritically reflects and
perpetuates a narrow discourse of Anglo-Australian ethnicity. This approach caters in an
ethnocentric way for Anglo-Australian students, and does emotional and intellectual violence
by requiring students who are not ‘Anglo’ to assimilate into a cultural framework which
actively disrespects them.
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Such a situation was illustrated recently by media reports on the efforts of Aboriginal students
to improve their educational prospects. Forty-three Aboriginal teenagers from a small, rural
town, left their homes, with their parents’ permission, to travel 1500km to a boarding school
in a larger regional town. They hoped that they would receive a better and more sympathetic
education there. According to the news report, the students complained that the state school in
their home town was catering for them very poorly compared to the preferential treatment that
it gave white students. On some occasions, black and white students were even punished in
different and discriminatory ways. Although some of the school administrators when
interviewed defended the school as providing the best education it could for indigenous as
well as Anglo-Australian students, others told the interviewers that the students who were
leaving perceived that they lacked a viable future in the home town. One school commentator
was reported as saying that the children “would prefer to be educated, housed and fed in a
school on the other side of the country than starve (in their home town)” (Toohey 2002, pp. 1-
2, see also ‘Four Corners’ video, the ABC, 2002).
Perhaps these Aboriginal teenagers have good reason to be concerned about their educational
chances in their rural home town. They would probably be well aware that the education
system does not give indigenous peoples the same opportunities that it gives most other ethnic
groups. This is immediately evident from looking at the figures that reveal the educational
status of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Educational statistics indicate that
people who hold university degrees represent just over 25 percent of the adult population in
Australia. But only 1.3 percent of indigenous Australians have degrees. Only 6.6 percent of
indigenous Australians have successfully completed high school with a Year 12 qualification,
compared to a national average of 70 percent (AustStats 1999b). Many drop out of school
before the completion of Grade 10, the end of junior high school. Recently there has been an
improvement in literacy levels among indigenous students: by 1999 about 66 % were meeting
the standards set out for eight to nine-year old students in Year 3 (up from only 20% meeting
the standards in 1996). But after Year 3, reading, writing and numeracy skills decline sharply,
“to the point where many Indigenous students are often 3 to 4 year levels below other
students and students leave school with the English literacy level of a six year old”
(MCEETYA 2001). For the education system, this represents a serious structural problem
which arguably is of its own making.
Why are indigenous Australians not gaining the same benefits from school as the average
Australian population of students? From my experiences as a teacher educator in Australia, I
would suggest that the answers are intricately bound up with the neo-colonial practices that
influence interrelationships between school and society. From a postcolonial perspective, the
discourses of ethnocentrism and anti-Indigenous hostility in traditional pedagogies, curricula
and relationships assault Indigenous students by marginalising, humiliating and excluding
them. Many react by ‘turning off’, as the indicators of low performance and high absenteeism
suggest.
The education offered to Indigenous and other non-white ethnic minorities is shaped by
institutional racism in several ways. The inadequate training and professional development of
the teachers perpetuates the immersion of the students in an uncritically presented Eurocentric
curriculum. The fact that most of the teachers are ‘Anglo’ illustrates the problem that too few
people from Indigenous or ethnic minority cultures have been given the opportunity to train
as teachers. Assessment systems show a high degree of culture bias (Luke et al 2002). In
these culturally problematic schools, children from Indigenous and other non-Anglo
backgrounds are expected to fit into the mainstream school culture, yet they are given little or
no help in doing so. The study of languages other than English is inadequately provided for.
The content of the school curriculum is shaped by Anglo-Australian perspectives and
concerns. An Anglocentric conception of knowledge from Mathematics to Music is likely to
perpetuate messages of white supremacy, in that ‘other’ cultural traditions and knowledges
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are either rendered invisible or distorted, an approach which represents strong legacies of a
colonial past. In such schools, nothing in the curriculum promotes learning that would help
the students to understand the real history or current profile of Australia and the possibilities
for improvements in the future. The performance of students disadvantaged by this kind of
curriculum is likely to suffer. School failure can follow people throughout their lives, as is
shown by the serious discrepancy in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
school students and the low representation of indigenous people in high-status careers. The
historical lack of effective policies from State Departments of Education underlies the
continuation of the monocultural, neo-colonial character of many schools. The devastating
effects of racism and ethnocentrism in schooling are discussed by many researchers including
M. Singh (1995), Rizvi (1996), P. Singh (1997), Ninnes (2000), Partington (2001), Malin
(1990), Heitmeyer 2001, and Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist (2003, in press). On the basis of
dissatisfaction with Eurocentric curricula and unjust assessment systems, some Aboriginal
and Islander teachers are striving to put in place an alternative curriculum and pedagogy that
more adequately meets the needs of indigenous students (Hart and Downie, 2000).
What characterises culturally problematic schooling, then, is that it carries out a wide range
of discriminatory practices, which favour students from ‘Anglo’ backgrounds, and victimise
students from non-white or non English-speaking backgrounds. The racism and ethnocentrism
inherited from the colonial period are expressed through the curriculum, the assessment
system and the library, in the tolerance of the inappropriate pedagogy and behaviour of some
teachers, in the limited role given to parent and citizen associations, in the nature of extra-
curricular activities, in the fear of many parents to intervene on behalf of their children.
Students are likely to associate in their own cultural cliques, with very little intercultural
interaction and sometimes with high levels of inter-group hostility. This hostility is expressed
in racist taunts, insulting ethnic ‘jokes’ and bullying, but on occasions it can result in serious
injury or the deaths of those being bullied (see Perera and Pugliese, 1998:164). Sometimes
this kind of school attempts multicultural activities such as a day or a week devoted to
festivals, but if these remain only token, they send a message that patronisingly and wrongly
suggests the superficiality of non-Anglo cultures. Such schools are at the stage of practising a
Eurocentric approach which not only takes Europe and its diasporas as the benchmark of
global culture, but is also a vector for repugnant discourses of racism that diminish both
perpetrators and victims.
The interculturally proactive school
The broad aims of Australian multicultural policy obviously apply to all Australians and not
just ethnic minorities. Educators need to be clear about how the goals and practices of
multicultural education apply to all students. Noble and Poynting (1999), in their article on
multicultural education for intercultural understanding, relates to these issues in an Australian
context. They start their analysis by a useful overview of the history of multicultural
education policy in Australia and with comments on the issues involved. As they point out,
multicultural education places a challenging set of demands on teachers. They have to learn to
deal with the needs of children of diverse ethnicities, have to work out viable classroom
management strategies, and have to design and teach an intercultural curriculum.
An ‘interculturally proactive’ school is one in which most teachers are constantly active in
designing and implementing programs and strategies to promote intercultural understanding
and inter-relationships. They would place the greatest importance on dialogue, negotiation
and working together with parents and friends of the school. It would be one in which
teachers have the knowledge and skills to teach inter-culturally, using approaches of critical
education and sophisticated language teaching. It would be one in which the skills of parents
are used to assist teachers, and one in which students have an opportunity to become multi-
lingual, that is, fluent in English, retaining their mother tongue, and learning other languages.
It would be one in which teachers are assisted to develop their intercultural skills through
professional development programs, which is very important since many teachers have
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received no suitable preparation in their degree programs.
Three useful strategies of successful intercultural schools are considered here, a strategy of
community liaison, a strategy of critical socio-cultural study within the curriculum and a
strategy of education in home languages.
(i)Community liaison.
The example of community liaison described was developed by an ethnically diverse Catholic
girl’s school in Sydney [Noble and Poynting (1999:73-75) citing research carried out by
Kalantzis et al (1990)]. The school consisted of students who were mostly from poor families.
Most of the students – ninety percent – were of non-English-speaking backgrounds. 36 ethnic
groups were present, about half of which were Arabic speakers, and the rest from Italian,
Vietnamese and other backgrounds. At first, the school’s administrators and teachers tried to
communicate with parent through the traditional Parents and Citizens Association, but they
found that information about curriculum changes was not getting through to parents because
only a few parents, mostly English-speaking, were attending the meetings. The school leaders
decided to use a different strategy. They gave Arabic-speaking teachers time off teaching to
visit students’ homes and talk with their parents about the curriculum changes and other
school matters. Families of other language backgrounds were then visited by a teacher who
spoke those languages, or by an English-speaking teacher accompanied by an interpreter.
The teachers found that parents in their homes were willing to talk about many of the
concerns that they had about their children’s education. This strategy became the basis for
language-specific meetings between parents and teachers at the school as soon as parents felt
more comfortable about going there. The language-based meetings proved to be a very
valuable means of parent-teacher dialogue. Parents were familiarised with a range of school
and government programs, and teachers listened to the concerns of parents. Some curriculum
and timetable changes were made at the school as a result of parents’ suggestions. This
community liaison program was adopted by some other schools because of its usefulness as a
process of exchanging information and negotiating change. What was outstanding about it
was its success in changing the process from one exhorting ‘cultural sensitivity’, which bids
teachers to be ‘aware’ of ethnic minority needs, to one incorporating a more equitable,
dialogic intercultural communication in which parents from a non-English-speaking
background have a voice (Noble and Poynting p.75).
(iii)Socio-cultural programs.
Noble and Poynting (1999: 76-77) describe The Social Literacy Project, a curriculum
developed as a way of challenging the inadequate approach of schools which incorrectly
believe they are promoting multicultural education by having ‘multicultural days’ which
celebrate exotic food, dance and costume. The Social Literacy Project, implemented in some
schools in New South Wales, provided a structured, comprehensive Social Sciences program
for Years 4 – 12. It follows an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the skills of history,
geography, sociology, commerce and language education. As the authors observe
“the skills being developed here are those of a critical social literacy, which
examines the structures and meanings of Western society, rather than assimilating
students into an ‘Australian way of life’. ‘Participation’ here also means the ability to
challenge and change. Further, in drawing on Western as well as non-Western
societies, Social Literacy embraces a fuller sense of diversity than mere celebration of
difference allows, because it embraces a critical understanding” (pp. 76-77).
iii) Education in and through home languages
In some interculturally proactive schools, emphasis is put on promoting learning through
community language programs. For example, the Tempe High School, a state high school in
Sydney, developed a language policy and program which immensely improved the
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performance of its culturally diverse student body. The school hired teachers to teach in at
least six of the languages of the students – Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese, Greek, Italian and
French. Student studied their home languages, literature and history, and they also studied the
Anglo-Australian curriculum, assisted by teachers who could explain it to them in their home
languages. Before this experiment, most students had been failing state tests and
examinations, but after a few years of the program, student performance met and in some
cases exceeded the State average (Cockburn 1994, SBS-TV videorecording).
These examples of community liaison, critical socio-cultural education and in-depth language
education represent the kinds of practices which move schools towards an interculturally
proactive philosophy and action which puts schooling on the road of decolonisation. Another
practice that should be added is attention to the emotional intelligence and social skills of
students, which could contribute to their ability to negotiate and solve day-to-day cultural
conflicts. The question is how to reorganise the education system so that teachers would as a
matter of course incorporate these elements of high-quality intercultural education in their
practice, and indeed go beyond them to address even more difficult postcolonial challenges
such as changing the very form and nature of the traditional school.
Taking a postcolonial turn.
It is clear that it will not be easy for the Eurocentric, culturally problematic school to
transform itself into an interculturally proactive school which systematically promotes
cultural diversity in its curriculum and social programs. There will need to be a great deal of
help from the state departments of education and the universities. In Australia, this help is
often provided, with programs of financial assistance for the special needs of minority groups
and curriculum development advice. This is sound policy, but at the same time, we need to
ask: is transformation into an intercultural school enough? From a postcolonial perspective I
argue that even if an intercultural philosophy is embedded in the school culture, the school
might still be operating in a constrained way that limits the intelligence and creativity of
students with subject-divided timetables, rigid age grading, gender divisions and other
hierarchies.
Schools arguably need to have a vision of the future that will prepare students and teachers
for the changes of a globalising era. Exploring and developing new paradigms of educational
change will be more likely to tackle both cultural and economic problems than the old
paradigms of nineteenth century education. A postcolonial view of the school as it currently
exists would see it as an outdated European institution in many ways, including the way in
which it promotes a curriculum steeped in the ethnocentric assumption that the West is best
when it comes to knowledge. It would recognise that the postmodern era is making this
traditional education system obsolete and old educational institutions dysfunctional, as
Aviram (1996) argues.
The most fundamental aspects of education are being challenged by postmodern and
postcolonial thinking and circumstances. There is a recognition that the traditional school
almost inevitably promotes and reinforces socio-economic inequity (Hickling-Hudson 2002,
Ladwig 2000). Furthermore, traditional bioregimes of schooling are unsuitable to the extent
that they drill the bodies of students into a regimented and stultified approach to learning
through rigid timetables and stages predetermined by the academic curriculum (Tait 2000).
Many scholars have shown that traditional curriculum content is seriously flawed (Ninnes
2001) and is regarded by many as increasingly irrelevant. The sexist nature of the school is
criticised (Taylor 2000), and its social class divisions are also criticised (Henry 2000).
Methods based on books and writing have to compete with a range of modes of electronic
communication, and educational organisations need no longer be hierarchical or spatially
fixed. The distinction between childhood and adulthood is less sharp, and traditional aims are
under question. Individualism and competitiveness are being challenged as destructive to the
collective team work and cooperative ethos necessary to bring about sustainable development.
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There is increasing recognition that the ‘good life’ cannot be based on unbridled
consumerism, gender antagonisms and social irresponsibility (Ellyard 1999).
Postcolonial educators argue that it is vitally necessary to teach students to critique and think
beyond the old modernist categories of culture, race and nation. As Willinsky (1999:101)
observes, ‘The schools…have worked so hard at helping the young imagine themselves
within a world of nations, cultures and races, they now need to afford the young a place to
stand apart from this legacy of divisions and boundaries’. In a globalising future, we are likely
to become less and less confined within these constructed and limiting boundaries. A
postcolonial perspective in the educational curriculum would be both analytical and activist in
challenging preconceived boundaries. It would help students to learn how to identify the
prejudices, divisions and hierarchies of the colonialist /imperialist legacy and how these have
come to be the foundations of the continuing and deepening inequalities in globalisation
(Hickling-Hudson 2002). It would encourage them to utilise and contribute to the positive
trends as part of their education, for example, by becoming involved in transglobal
movements or agencies that promote social justice (Hickling-Hudson 1999). Postcolonial
educators advocate “reworking multiculturalism for Christianity’s next millennium so that it
encompasses concerns about globalisation, and offers some insights into the changing role of
international corporations, the changing patterns of migration, and the influence of the new
global reality on identity formation” (Singh 2000: 121).
New Curriculum Models
Flowing out of the postcolonial critique of schooling is the question: how can teachers move
schools out of their Eurocentric mould and into a more equitable and challenging paradigm?
An example of a guiding framework currently being developed to help teachers reframe
education is that based on research commissioned by 'Education Queensland', the Department
of Education of the Australian state of Queensland. In the Queensland Longitudinal Research
Study (QRLS) a team of researchers studied 24 schools to find out what pedagogies make a
difference to students in terms of social justice (Lingard, Mills and Hayes, 2000: 103). Based
on their research, the team developed a model of ‘Productive Pedagogies’ composed of four
dimensions: intellectual quality, connectedness to the world, supportive classroom
environments and the recognition of differences. The research suggested that high quality
pedagogies in these dimensions produce strong student outcomes. ‘Education Queensland’
(the Queensland State Department of Education) is using this research to develop policy and
strategies which will give students, teachers and communities a more promising opportunity
to be intercultural and future-oriented than past curricular models did. The new program of
curriculum reforms has three aspects: ‘New Basics’ (what is taught), ‘Productive Pedagogies’
(how it is taught) and ‘Rich Tasks’ (how kids show it) (see Education Queensland 2002). It
incorporates concepts of education for a productive, inter-cultural future with the innovations
and creative thinking of local teachers and significant links with the communities from which
students come. It aims to restructure the curriculum around four new interdisciplinary areas of
learning:
- life pathways and social futures
- multiliteracies, numeracies and communications media
- active citizenship
- environments and technologies (Luke 1999).
The positive effect of a sustained dialogue between research and practice is well illustrated in
the action of the State Department of Education to utilise this research to frame a new model
of teaching which schools in search of improvement can choose to adopt. Several schools
have chosen to be pilots in applying this new model to their educational practices. Teachers
seeking to adopt the ‘Productive Pedagogies’ model can turn for practical guidance and ideas
to the Classroom Reflection Manual developed by Education Queensland’s Curriculum
Implementation Unit (2002), which based it on the QRLS research. I am particularly
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interested in the advice given in the manual about good practice that could help teachers
improve their skills in intercultural education. Three examples are selected here:
Example 1. The manual encourages teachers to help students pursue knowledge in
depth, and to see that it is not static but often problematic and always socially
constructed and open to question. The example of good practice is that of a Year 7
class (aged twelve to thirteen) engaged in collaborative discussion about what it
means to be an Australian. The students were given a range of texts presenting
contrasting positions, including poetry from both Anglo Australian and indigenous
Australian viewpoints, and the words of the national anthem. The students discussed
the dominant messages in the texts and the linguistic features that supported these
messages. They were asked to provide feedback on whose interests were served and
whose interests marginalised by the different texts (p. 6)
Example 2. The manual suggests that teachers use a narrative approach as much as
possible in teaching. They are encouraged to help students identify the forms and
features of narrative (such as personal stories, biographies, literary texts) as distinct
from those of the expository approach (for example through non-fiction prose and
scientific expression). The example of good practice is how a teacher in a Year 6
Social Science class dealt with the sensitive topic of racism in the context of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, by drawing on his own experiences to
illustrate how his views changed over time. He provided a vivid picture of the beliefs
that he had absorbed as a child, and told the students how it was only with a visit to
an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander museum ‘that he had come to understand the
oppression that Indigenous people in his town had faced…. This narrative was a very
powerful device for demonstrating the impact of racism on a child’s interpretation of
the world. It was clearly more powerful than an exposition would have been’ (p. 17).
Example 3. Active citizenship is an important attribute of productive pedagogies, and
the manual asks teachers to promote in their students an active attitude to their
democratic rights and responsibilities as global citizens. It gives the example of Year
7 students engaged in a unit of work considering the impact of poverty on societies
across the globe. The focus was on food, and after studying the range of situations
that contributes to serious food shortages and starvation, the students prepared a
library presentation exploring the impact of poverty on children’s lives in Australia
and other parts of the world. They then made recommendations for school community
involvement in Amnesty International and Community Aid Abroad (p.19).
These examples show that the manual is strong in its articulation of a theoretical framework
of high-quality pedagogical approaches and examples that could enable teachers to reflect
critically on their work, and to design curriculum and learning experiences that engage deep
student interest. However, if the writers of the manual were to engage in further commitment
to an intercultural philosophy of teaching, they would need to address the concern that it
provides only five examples of specifically intercultural practice out of twenty four examples
in all. Many teachers come from an educational background which devalues or ignores
intercultural knowledge, and this suggests that the manual needs to be much more
thoroughgoing in helping such teachers to achieve multicultural competence. The QRLS
researchers point out that while most of the schools that they studied showed a high degree of
supportiveness for students, the other three dimensions in the model of Productive
Pedagogies, particularly ‘recognition of difference’, were relatively rare (Lingard, Mills and
Hayes, 2000). My experience as a teacher educator endorses this. I have found that many
teachers who want to practice inclusive and intercultural teaching felt that they simply did not
have adequate skills, training and support to do so systematically. Arguably, the Classroom
Reflection Manual could have taken a more proactive approach to all of the examples of good
10
practice by discussing the pedagogy that would be necessary to move curricula in an
intercultural direction.
However, elements of the New Basics model have the potential of taking the education
system in a postcolonial direction which promotes global understanding and orientations. As a
curriculum responding to postcolonial times, ‘it suggests sites of interrogation that mobilise
subjectivities and identities, narratives and experience, contradiction and unevenness – a
challenge to a chronology of bland conformity’ (Crowley (1999: 107). Some of the ‘Rich
Tasks’ that students are being asked to carry out to pursue their learning particularly show this
promise. ‘Rich Tasks’ utilise the school’s organisational capacity to help students do relevant
work with intense intellectual engagement, which is necessary to improve learning outcomes.
Teams of teachers and other educators designed these tasks for each school grade. I will quote
some of the ‘Rich Tasks’ which in my view would be likely to stimulate deep intercultural
engagement and learning.
Rich Tasks.
Year 3 Students create an interactive Web page and use it to communicate with students
from other schools about themselves, their school and their community. They gather
and organise information, present it in imaginative formats and respond in
appropriate ways to questions and requests from other students.
Year 6
Students collect oral histories from older members of their own community and from
people in different cultural groups. They prepare a multi-media presentation for a
selected audience to show historical changes, for example concerning the changing
nature of work.
Year 9 Students debate a range of issues, including ethical and moral questions, to do with
emerging scientific advances in biotechnology. They prepare arguments to be used in
public forums, make reasoned predictions, and prepare a plan for a world conference
to be held five years hence, taking account of purpose, themes, presenters and
audiences.
[Source: Education Queensland 2000]
If the global orientation suggested by these tasks could be sustained across the curriculum,
drastic change to curricular approaches based on the traditional disciplines would become
likely. Such a curriculum has the potential for taking the interculturally proactive school
several steps further – making it a place that educates the young in ‘the connections among
post-cultural themes of the transnational, the hybrid and the local’ (Willinsky 1999:105).
Australian Aboriginal epistemology provides equally important guidelines for educators as
they struggle with the realization of the unsuitability of Eurocentric education and seek to
reframe it. Educational knowledge can be unsettled and stretched by indigenous ways of
thinking which challenge not only the curriculum, but the very shape and nature of the school.
An example of this is given by Michael Christie in an article entitled ‘Galtha: the application
of Aboriginal philosophy to school learning’ (Christie 2000). This is a moving account of an
educator’s gradual understanding of Aboriginal epistemology and the effect it had on his role
in Aboriginal education. An educator from New Zealand, Christie has been working for over
thirty years as a scholar and writer and as a teacher linguist in schools in Aboriginal
communities in the Northern Territory of Australia. He describes two different modes of
educational change in an Aboriginal school, one guided by White and one guided by
Indigenous educators. First, he outlines the long process by which White educators tried to
design teaching and learning based on Western concepts for Aboriginal peoples in this part of
Australia. What was missing from these attempts were acknowledgements that there were
11
already practices of literacy and mathematics within Aboriginal cultures, and that Western
literacy and mathematics had their own specific preconceptions, ideas and pedagogies which
were denying and devaluing Aboriginal learning. Even when the White educators tried to
‘Aboriginalise’ the school by encouraging the learning of local languages and translating
books into these languages, they were far from understanding what Aboriginalisation should
mean. They saw it as a process by which change had to happen to the Aboriginal teachers
who work in schools, rather than to the schools in which they work (Christie 2000: 9).
Christie experienced a deeper level of Aboriginalisation of a school at Yirrkala under a new
Aboriginal principal. The curriculum was being redesigned according to a ‘both ways’
philosophy ‘where both western and Aboriginal viewpoints were to be heard, respected and
presented alongside each other’. Yolgnu elders visited the school regularly to teach Yolgnu
knowledge and philosophies of learning. Christie, gradually absorbing some understanding of
these philosophies, came to see not only how powerful they were for learning, but also how
vividly they revealed the arrogance of the white Australian imposition of a certain narrow
type of schooling. As he explains it, the Yolgnu philosophy of education centers on the
concepts of ‘Ganma’, ‘Garma’ and ‘Galtha’.
Ganma. What happens in a ‘both ways’ learning situation (Aboriginal and Western) is to the
elders akin to what they see happening in a ‘Ganma’, a lagoon within the mangroves where
salt water coming in from the sea meets streams of fresh water coming down from the land.
Each body of water has its own flows, and the lagoon is highly productive as a food source,
just as each body of learning has its own logic and their meeting is highly creative and
different from the originals.
Garma. The school should be like ‘Garma’, a public ceremonial area for open ceremonies
which everyone can participate in and enjoy. ‘Educationally Garma means the open forum
where people can talk and share their ideas, differences can be talked through, and everyone
can work to reach agreement’ (p. 13).
Galtha. A place where people from different territories assemble to make important
negotiations, agreements and plans, Galtha is also used as a word for the process of meeting
and negotiating. So in education, Galtha is ‘the nexus between plan and action, theory and
practice’ (p. 14).
When Ganma takes place in the learning of mathematics, for example, work must be done to
understand and compare the two knowledge systems underlying Western and Aboriginal
mathematics. ‘Part of the work of maths education, then, is fostering the ongoing
development of a collective definition of exactly what maths is, and what does it help us
achieve, and how, and just as importantly, what does it not help us achieve’ (p. 15). Literacy
education becomes a collective process in which writing takes on a more important role than
reading, and ‘learning produces the text, rather than texts producing learning’ (p, 16). Books
are made use of only as one kind of text among many other including journal writings,
diagrams, photos, plant specimens, wall charts, videos, bark paintings. Christie admits that
this was a humbling lesson to people like him who have spent years researching, writing,
illustrating, printing and distributing ‘hundreds of introductory readers in various languages
which twenty years later continue to lie almost untouched on the shelf’ (p. 16).
A New Teacher Education Approach
The two types of educational change outlined in the last section suggest that the old
understandings of education, even of multicultural education, may be evolving in a
postcolonial way. When the creativity of teachers and students is freed and nourished by
successful implementations of pedagogies such as those involved in the ‘New Basics’ or in
‘Ganma, Galtha and Garma’, intercultural modes of knowledge could start to fertilise each
other in a way that asserts meaningful challenges to neo-colonialism. Can changes in teacher
education institutions prepare teachers adequately for such deep changes in the curriculum,
12
knowledge systems and pedagogies? and, equally important, how can teacher education
institutions themselves initiate further useful change?
The last decade of Australian teacher education has seen an increasing awareness of the
importance of preparing teachers for cultural diversity. Yet, recognising the need for this is
not the same thing as putting it into practice. Studies have suggested that faculties and schools
of teacher education have not necessarily succeeded in providing student teachers with an
adequate understanding of cultural issues in education. In a recent research project that I did
with a colleague, we found that most universities did not make it compulsory for students to
take subjects that prepared them in teaching for cultural diversity, and most students did not
choose to take these subjects (Hickling-Hudson and McMeniman, 1996). Teacher education
faculties can be as ‘culturally problematic’ as some schools. The result is that the majority of
teachers are likely to continue to perpetuate an Anglocentric curriculum, because that is the
only approach in which most have been socialised.
Today things are starting to change in some Australian teacher faculties of teacher education,
including that of the Queensland University of Technology where I teach. With support from
the education department of the Queensland state government, the entire Bachelor of
Education degree is being reconceptualized and redesigned. Traditionally, education for
cultural diversity was optional, and not taken by most students. In contrast, in the new degree,
a very important innovation is that of requiring an Indigenous Studies subject to be
compulsory for all student teachers. A program of studies for this subject has been designed
and will be taught from 2003 by a partnership between the university’s Faculty of Education
and indigenous lecturers in the Oodgeroo Unit (an institution which promotes indigenous
studies throughout the university). The subject covers one semester (14 weeks), and all first-
year students, usually numbering between 800 and 1000, will be required to take it. This
program will not only ask students to study issues relating to Indigenous people in Australia.
It will also ask them to investigate the cultural context of Australian society, and their own
cultural backgrounds, socialisation and assumptions. The program thus shifts the focus from
having Indigenous people explain themselves, to asking students of other ethnicities to reflect
on their own cultural assumptions, and then consider this in relation to the Indigenous
dimension of Australian society. Students are asked to study the principles that should guide
their work when teaching about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and issues in
specific school settings including:
- A culturally diverse urban setting which includes some Aboriginal students
- A remote community setting where the majority of families and students are indigenous
- A community consisting mainly of professional families, where the majority of students
are not indigenous.
The indigenous studies subject described above is taken by students in the first year of a four
year degree. The degree course is built around a set of Teacher Practitioner Attributes and
central to these are a set of outcomes that will demand all students to present evidence that
their practices are culturally responsive and inclusive. The faculty is currently reviewing all
programs to ensure that these attributes are developmentally embedded in all Teaching and
Learning, Field Studies and Curriculum units. It hopes to offer elective pathways allowing
students to opt to do one elective subject or a suite of subjects in an Indigenous pathway or an
Inclusivity pathway. There is scope for staff to develop a futures pathway if deemed
desirable. This would go some way towards helping student teachers to develop the
broad intercultural skills necessary to prepare them for teaching in a society where the goal is
for over 100 ethnic groups to strive to live according to ideals of ‘civic duty, cultural respect,
social equity and productive diversity’ (National Multicultural Advisory Council, 1999, p. 9).
The launching of a compulsory indigenous studies subject is a start, and could hopefully be
part of the foundation for a developing a more postcolonial orientation to Australian teacher
13
education. But teacher education is still not offering an internationalised curriculum. It has not
yet met the challenge of global education, which bids teachers to help the young understand
why the world is still so ‘beset by struggles of ethnic nationalism, hardening of racial lines,
and staggering divides between wealth and poverty’ (Willinsky 1998: 1), and what can be
done to challenge and change this. Teacher educators could do well to join schools in
accepting guidelines (Curriculum Corporation 2002, p. 10) for teaching global perspectives
by integrating these vital themes of study across the curriculum:
• One world: globalisation, interdependence, sustainable futures
• Identity and cultural diversity
• Dimensions of change
• Social justice and human rights
• Peace building and conflict
Conclusion
This paper has cited a range of research in Australian education to illustrate how practices of
culturally proactive schooling provide an alternative to the racist and ethnocentric practices of
culturally problematic schools. Challenges to the monocultural thrust of neo-colonial
education are evident in the critical multicultural curriculum, the teaching of a diversity of
languages including non-European ones, and committed school-community interaction. Such
practices help to decolonise the school. Postcolonial challenges are extended by trends
towards intercultural pedagogies and interdisciplinary assessment tasks such as those in
Education Queensland’s new model of schooling, and are even further extended by ideas of
the complete restructuring of the traditional school, as suggested by the Aboriginal example.
Postcolonial teaching involves helping students to identify and critique the different ‘regimes
of truth’ that characterise our social arrangements, and to build positive identities that move
easily between the local and the global. Changes in the pre-service and in-service education of
teachers are necessary to underpin this kind of educational transformation. Research into
these educational trends in Australia illustrate the importance of the dialogue between
research and practice, and could influence ideas on how to restructure education to promote
intercultural cooperation in a globalising world.
14
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Corrections
p. 385, line 23: after (see Hickling-Hudson, 2002). Erase ‘in press’.
p. 387, last line of page: Erase (see Singh: Teacher Learning Network)
p. 388, line 18: after ‘1500km to’ Insert ‘an indigenous-led’ (travel 1500km to an indigenous-
led boarding school)
p. 389, line 32: Erase ‘from Mathematics to Music’, replace with ‘in all subject disciplines’
p. 390, line 3: Erase ‘in press’.
p. 391, line 16: after Kalatntzis, add ‘and Cope’. Kalantzis and Cope (1990).
p. 399. Could replace current 2 page section with the following:
Conclusion: the postcolonial turn in multiculturalism.
The two types of educational change outlined in the last section suggest that the old
understandings of education, even of multicultural education, may be evolving in a
postcolonial way. When the creativity of teachers and students is freed and nourished by
successful implementations of pedagogies such as those involved in the ‘New Basics’ or in
‘Ganma, Galtha and Garma’, intercultural modes of knowledge could start to fertilise each
other in a way that asserts meaningful challenges to neo-colonialism. Clearly, significant
changes in teacher education would be needed to prepare teachers adequately for such deep
changes in the curriculum, knowledge systems and pedagogies. Of equal importance, teacher
education institutions should themselves be initiating further intercultural change.
This paper has cited a range of research in Australian education to illustrate how practices of
culturally proactive schooling provide an alternative to the racist and ethnocentric practices of
culturally problematic schools. Challenges to the monocultural thrust of neo-colonial
education are evident in the critical multicultural curriculum, the teaching of a diversity of
languages including non-European ones, and committed school-community interaction. Such
practices help to decolonise the school. Postcolonial challenges are extended by trends
towards intercultural pedagogies and interdisciplinary assessment tasks such as those in
Education Queensland’s new model of schooling, and are even further extended by ideas of
the complete restructuring of the traditional school, as suggested by the Aboriginal example.
Postcolonial teaching involves helping students to identify and critique the different ‘regimes
of truth’ that characterise our social arrangements, and to build positive identities that move
easily between the local and the global. Research into these educational trends in Australia
illustrate the importance of the dialogue between research and practice, and could influence
ideas on how to restructure education to promote positive cultural interaction in a globalising
world both riven with inter-ethnic conflict and full of intercultural promise.
intercultural cooperation in a globalising world still riven with inter-ethnic conflict.
