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A standalone literature review was conducted to ascertain the extent and status of research on the practical inclusion of Chinese music in Western educational contexts. The study identified a body of journal articles and postgraduate theses on the topic. The papers were analysed to discern what might constitute best practice classroom approaches to teaching and learning Chinese music. Based on the review's criteria for inclusion -- papers were in English, praxis-oriented, peer-reviewed and published over the past three decades -- the study found that the number of publications was limited (19) and that in terms of established pedagogical approaches they engaged, some gaps existed, certain pedagogies were minimally represented and some were perhaps too recent to have been trialled. Even so, the study concluded that while best practice is an elusive notion, Chinese music forms and styles appear to be compatible with a range of educational settings and Western-oriented music teaching and learning approaches.

Many schools in Victoria, Australia, are multicultural, with students coming from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Content area teachers often educate EAL students in their classrooms, even though they may not have specialised EAL teaching qualifications. This paper presents the experiences of primary and secondary teachers working in multicultural schools in Victoria. It explores the way in which teachers meet the needs of EAL students in their classrooms, and the support that is available to assist them to do so. This paper reports that teaching practice, school leadership, professional learning, and identity, influence the way in which teachers educate EAL students. However, this paper reveals that teachers require more support to assist them with educating EAL students. The most beneficial forms of support are professional learning, collaboration between staff, and understanding different cultures. This paper also argues that experienced teachers require relevant ongoing professional learning throughout their careers.

The predicted growth of the aged care sector in Australia, driven by the ageing population, is expected to create an increasing need for workplaces to support the development for all kinds and classifications of workers to undertake their work within multicultural settings. This paper describes and elaborates the necessary and increasing requirement for workplaces to support adult learning in multicultural circumstances. A mixed methods approach was used to collect data from workers undertaking the role of carer in residential aged care facilities across the east coast of Australia. Arising from the collection and analysis of these data are contributions to knowledge including a conceptual model for understanding learning in multicultural settings. This research emphasizes a notion that cultural diversity has a fundamental influence on workplace learning in aged care and identifies practices to support cross-cultural communication, coworking and learning. Further, inter-worker learning is reinforced as a key enabler of performance in aged care work. Such contributions help to understand what influences workplace learning in multicultural settings and how it may be better supported.

Within Australia, the State of Victoria has the greatest ethnic diversity and the largest number of second languages used at home. It also has the highest rates of students participating in language learning at school. It is also home to the country's largest and oldest government school for second language learning -- the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) which teaches over 45 languages to approximately 16.000 students in 40 centres across the state. This paper develops a profile of the human capital of language teachers at the VSL and explores their views, which have until now been unexplored. It draws on an extensive anonymous survey of the VSL staff (mostly teachers) with over 552 responses. The results are both predictable and yet diverse. The findings show that the staff at the VSL are demographically a unique group, as they represent a rich gathering of cultural and linguistic diversity that is unlikely to be matched in any other institution in Australia. This paper presents the views of this exceptional cohort who work in a specialised environment that proudly holds the teaching of languages as its "core business". The survey revealed that staff are highly enthusiastic and strongly believe in the role that their school is playing in nurturing multilingualism and multiculturalism in the state of Victoria. But it also showed their deep concerns about a number of current problems in the field of languages education in Australia. It also revealed that there is currently a fragmentation of opinion on the best label for languages as a curriculum area. This paper argues that the considerations of the staff at this specialist institution are highly developed and can therefore be seen as a beacon for the concerns of professionals in the field of languages education in other educational settings in Australia and overseas.

The purpose of this paper was to explore bilingual educators' perceptions of their strategies to maintain their cultural and religious identities within a multicultural society. This multiple case studies of three institutions employed semi-structured interviews and documents. The research question guides this study: What are strategies that have been utilized within the institutions, to further the aims of multicultural education? The data in this study was analyzed thematically via NVivo Qualitative data analysis. The finding of this study showed that the institutions were committed to providing a public education alongside a multicultural education -- respect for other religions, ethnicities, and cultures. These institutions have a strong commitment to their spiritual purpose and maintenance of their respective religious and cultural identities. The findings of this study have implications for the understanding of similar programs and the ways to preserve cultural and religious identities within educational contexts. Most studies of multicultural education have been conducted in public institutions resulting in little information on how ethnic institutions promote cultural and religious identities within their institutions and communities. This research contributes to the body of literature that examines the promotion of cultural and religious identities in ethnic institutions.

Australia first documented national goals for primary and secondary education in 1989 with the Hobart Declaration on Schooling. Since then, Australia's goals for the education of children have been updated in three subsequent National Education Declarations. Each of the Declarations includes specific goals for Indigenous Australian students, as well as goals for students to learn about Indigenous Australian peoples and cultures. Arranged into four thematic sections covering each Declaration, this paper traces colonial representation of Indigenous Australians in these policy documents. Each section discusses the socio-political factors that influenced education policy at the time each Declaration was written, and the socio-political priorities of Indigenous peoples in the same period. We argue that the evolution of representations of Indigenous peoples in education policy is evidence of the continued resistance of Indigenous peoples to colonial dominance in education policies.

This paper explores the strengths and limitations of mandatory professional standards for teachers in Australia and Chile, two countries containing colonized societies. First, the paper compares the reality of the countries with a focus on the structure and principles of mandatory professional standards for the professional development of teachers. In Australia, professional standards for teachers includes strategies to teach in Indigenous contexts, highlighting the importance of understanding and respecting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their traditional culture. However, in Chile, the Indigenous education debate is limited. Second, the paper discusses the strengths of approaches used to frame standards within the professional development of teachers. Strengths consider how teacher's expectations are impacted by an improvement in their knowledge of Indigenous. Finally, the paper explores the limitations of the mandatory standards in both. These reveal how diversity encountered among Indigenous cultures in Chile and Australia proves challenging when preparing teachers to perform in a particular Indigenous context. In Chile, teachers need specialized training to develop the necessary skills to work in Indigenous contexts. However, the Chilean standards of teacher professional development present limited guidelines for teaching in these contexts, which impact local language retention and culture. Recognizing the importance of Indigenous Education and inclusion in national policies is crucial. The new challenge for Chilean universities is to improve their teacher education programs for success in Indigenous Education.

This paper reviews current literature and research relevant to the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Early Childhood Education (ECE) workforce in Australia, including data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Australia is a highly multicultural society, with one out of every three people born overseas. Anecdotally, the Australian early childhood sector is reported to have a highly multicultural workforce. Yet there is a noticeable lack of data and research concerning cultural diversity in the Australian ECE workforce. This paper reports on the data from the ABS-Census of Population and Housing (ABS-Census), the small body of literature on the CALD ECE workforce and literature pertaining to CALD in other Australian workforces to argue that more data and research is needed. Developing a richer understanding of the status, experience and contributions of CALD educators would enable the sector to recognise and support the potential benefits of such a workforce for children and families and social cohesion in Australia.

This paper examines the implication of language and education policies for the indigenous minority populations in two contrasting multicultural and multilingual post-colonial nations, Australia and Malaysia. By comparing and contrasting ethnolinguistic and educational policies in these two diverse nations, this paper explores how indigenous minorities have been positioned within each nation's quest for meeting the challenges of becoming multilingual and multicultural nations. The authors argue that although both countries promote multicultural ideals, they fall short in their acknowledgement of the dignity of difference for their indigenous communities. The authors assert that educational and language policies for indigenous peoples must acknowledge the importance of difference and therefore include indigenous cultural ways of knowing, being, and doing to achieve successful educational outcomes.

Since contact, there has been a foundation of inhospitable interactions between the original sovereign peoples of the Australian continent and Eurpoean arrivals. Despite government policies appearing to shift from assimilative practices to reconciliation processes in the latter half of the 20th Century, ongoing interactions continue to be factious, caught up in discourses of power/knowledge, and, perhaps provocatively, couched primarily in misunderstandings. In the Australian schooling space, while there has been increased attention paid to the academic success of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students, and greater inclusion of their families, communities, and cultural practices, non-Indigenous led schools continue to be hamstrung by their epistemic inertia -- the cognitive inability to move beyond the fear of getting it wrong, offending, or being labelled racist. In this paper, we argue that the major impediment to ongoing and unresolved discord is concealed in the onto-epistemological foundation of what it means to respect, accept, and work with. To address this, we take up Welcoming to Country practices and Derrida's concept of hospitality to interrogate how more nuanced conceptualisations of reciprocity may be used to move beyond performative acts of reconciliation. The outcome of which may be a reimagining of practices that are relational and responsive for embracing and nourishing Indigenous cultures and languages.

This paper examines Karagiozis--Greek shadow puppet theatre for children--as a way to explore how the Arts might support socially just education in the early years. As authors from diverse cultural backgrounds with different experiences of arriving and residing in Australia, we consider themes of social justice identified in a Karagiozis play and an interview with a Greek-Australian Karagiozis puppeteer, drawing on Nussbaum's (2000) Capability Approach. Layered analysis of the data provides a basis for examining: (1) the potential of Karagiozis for exploring social justice themes with young children; and (2) intersections between social justice themes identified in Karagiozis and circumstances for multicultural groups in the Australian context. This paper builds awareness about the value of employing the Capability Approach as a framework for exploring matters of social justice and contributes to dialogue about the value of the Arts in opening possibilities for young children's learning and meaning-making about social justice matters in local and global contexts.

The importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child's family, culture, language and values is central to socially just education and is increasingly articulated in educational policy worldwide. Inclusive children's literature can support children's human rights and contribute to equitable and socially just outcomes for all children. However, evidence suggests many educational settings provide monocultural book collections which are counterproductive to principles of diversity and social justice. Further, that educators' understandings and beliefs about diversity can contribute to inequitable provision and use of diverse books and to inequitable outcomes of book sharing for many children. This paper reports on a larger study investigating factors and relationships influencing the use of children's literature to support principles of cultural diversity in the kindergarten rooms of long day care centres. The study was conducted within an ontological perspective of constructivism and an epistemological perspective of interpretivism informed by sociocultural theory. A mixed methods approach was adopted, and convergent design was employed interpret significant relationships and their meanings. Twenty-four educators and 110 children from four long day care centres in Western Australia participated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, video-based observations, field notes, document analysis and a book audit. This study firstly identified that current book collections in kindergarten rooms of long day care centres promote mono-cultural viewpoints and 'othering' of minority groups through limited access to books portraying inclusive and authentic cultural diversity. Secondly, that educators had limited understandings of the role of literature in acknowledging and valuing diversity and rarely used it to promote principles of diversity, resulting in a practice of "othering" those from minority group backgrounds. The key challenges which emerged from the study concerned beliefs, understanding and confidence of educators about diversity and inclusion, and the impact of these on their approaches to promoting principles of diversity through the use of children's books. This research contributes to discussion on the value of children's literature in achieving international principles of diversity. These findings have important social justice implications. The outcomes of this study have implications for educators, policy makers, early childhood organisations and those providing higher education and training for early childhood educators.

As sites of human social activity, schools must engage in challenging conversations between staff, students and their communities about social disharmonies. This paper presents interview data from a case study of Eucalyptus High School (not its real name), a large multicultural school located in a middle-class area in suburban Victoria (Australia). The paper examines the school's engagement in 'challenging conversations' about socially and politically volatile issues as part of a holistic approach to building school culture, highlighting certain limitations in this approach. An 'ecologies of practice' model is used to critically explore these, which could be used to support schools to adopt a broad and critical examination of the possibilities and limits of their cultivation of inclusive and nurturing environments.

Thirty years ago Australian researchers led the development of language and content integration in schools, advocating systematic teaching of language across the curriculum to meet the needs of English as an additional language (EAL) students. However, despite significant improvements in initial teacher education, targeted professional development and language-specific curriculum and assessment, this paper suggests that secondary teachers have gained only a superficial understanding of the language knowledge necessary to teach EAL students. Drawing on questionnaires, interviews, and observations, this case study of two secondary schools in Sydney reveals the majority of teachers report their perspectives and experiences of good teaching have equipped them with a repertoire of sufficient strategies to meet EAL needs, and they see little difference between teaching EAL and learners with low levels of literacy. This paper concludes a renewed focus on integrating language and content teaching and partnership models of professional learning and evaluation are needed.

In this paper, we draw on policy sociology and democratic theory to illustrate how evidence-based practice not only limits teachers' capacities to exercise professional discretion and authority, but also jeopardises the democratic project of schooling more broadly. Using theoretical concepts from Foucault's discipline with Connolly's pluralisation, we argue that evidence-based practice disciplines teachers to comply with a prescribed set of criteria, which constrains their capacity to respond to the evolving and emergent needs of their students and communities. Our argument is built from two projects conducted separately, but concurrently, in Australia and Denmark. The projects involved in-depth interviews with teachers, extensive observations within schools, and the collection and analysis of policy documents and artefacts. Using illustrative excerpts from both studies, we show how teacher participants expressed and embodied inclinations to do (or be) differently, but nonetheless felt the need to adhere to what the evidence established as the right way to do or be. In our view, this points to an increasingly rigid ontological space through which teachers can do, be and become, which raises questions about the extent to which an 'ethos of pluralisation' is possible within these schools.

Pre-service teachers' understandings, skills and dispositions as global, culturally literate citizens and agents of change have arguably never been more important. Professional standards, systemic policies and frameworks and a broad range of scholarly perspectives on culture position pre-service teachers to take up cultural education in sometimes conflicting ways. It is these orientations to culture within a teacher education program and how they sit alongside potentially incongruent policies, practices and worldviews that are the focus of this paper. The practitioner research draws on cultural identity theories, policies and pre-service teacher experiences in the teaching and learning of an undergraduate education subject entitled Education for Cultural Diversity at a regional Australian university. Through discursive analysis of policy and pre-service teacher surveys this paper explores tensions that arise in navigating cultural constructs with pre-service teachers.

The population of children in schools is rapidly becoming more ethnically and culturally diverse. However, there is a mismatch between the cultures in children's homes and the cultures in their schools. The funds of knowledge approach emerged in Tucson (Arizona, USA) in order to counter the deficit perspectives common in depictions of working-class, Latin American families. In this paper we critically report on two contemporary research projects conducted around funds of knowledge and social justice pedagogy. In particular, this paper describes and discusses two projects, which have been conducted in schools with disadvantaged students in USA (Latino students in Arizona) and Australia (students with low socio-economic status, from diverse ethnic groups), examining how these projects exemplify social justice pedagogy. Both projects reviewed explore the application of a funds of knowledge approach, in which students focus on a key aspect of their identity and living circumstances and investigate it, seeking to understand the current situation and create positive options for possible improvements.

This paper examines the trial implementation of the Australian Curriculum in a remote Aboriginal school. It was a school that at the time was beginning to achieve successes with the development of dual-knowledge, transformational outcomes based curriculum that had its justification in the Northern Territory Curriculum Framework. Drawing on the work of van Manen (1990) this paper uses lived experience as the methodology. It deals with an early-career teacher's struggle to remain faithful to her employer-directed task of introducing the Australian Curriculum while providing space for the Aboriginal world the school had a responsibility to serve. The discussion is placed within the context of national curriculum development and implementation in Australia. In scrutinizing this teacher's experience, the paper attempts to examine the broad question of the capability of small schools serving Aboriginal communities to implement national curriculum reform. It then details the issue as not simply a question of compatibility and resourcing but also a complex one of ethics. The experience contributes to the field by highlighting the struggle faced by those teachers caught between governmental reforms and the desires of Aboriginal communities for meaningful inclusion of cultural content within the curriculum.

Some of the key challenges in teaching intercultural communication (IC) are to engage learners in activities which develop their critical intercultural awareness and to prepare them for communication in superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) contexts. This paper discusses linguistic landscapes (LL) as an innovative method for teaching intercultural competence. Undergraduate linguistics students conducted a LL project to explore linguistic diversity in their chosen suburb of Sydney and reflected on their own intercultural learning experience. Student reflections revealed that the project had a strong impact on their perceptions of diversity and their attitudes towards other languages and cultures. Students increased their critical awareness of how identity, ideology and attitudes influence language choices and intercultural interactions. The experiential learning project also made them reflect on their own identity as intercultural citizens. The findings of this study highlight the usefulness of the project in developing intercultural competence (ICC). The paper discusses methodological implications for teaching IC in the context of increasingly multilingual and multicultural learning communities.

Multicultural Days are a regular event in Australian schools. While they are viewed as a vehicle for cultural inclusion and strengthening community, they have long been critiqued for their avoidance of a more critical engagement with deeper issues around cultural complexity. The intent of this paper is not simply to add to this critique but to understand why such forms of lazy multiculturalism persist in schools. Taking an ethnographic orientation to the field of multicultural education, it examines one school's approach to the Multicultural Day. The paper considers how, despite engaging in professional learning designed to challenge established practice in this area, teachers resisted the intellectual task of doing diversity differently. The ethnographic methods used in the study not only allowed for an examination of the practices this school engaged in, they drew attention to how teachers might modify their practice and develop a deeper understanding of cultural complexity.

Stories and literature play an important and necessary role in understanding the past and in creating the future. Yet, in colonised countries such as Australia, the status of contemporary national texts, particularly those reflecting the diverse voices of Indigenous writers, women, and other marginalised groups, continue to be underrepresented in schools. In this article, we explore the reasons why Australian texts continue to be marginalised in education, when there is a clear desire for diverse Australian voices amongst the reading public. We also consider the kinds of national identities that current text selection and teaching policies are creating and maintaining in schools. In order to develop these ideas, we draw on data collected via a survey of secondary English teachers for a pilot research project called "Teaching Australia." In this project, we explored the Australian texts being selected and championed by teachers in secondary schools, the perceptions of nation and national identity these convey, and teachers' approaches to including diverse Australian texts in their classrooms. In the final section of the paper, we consider some future opportunities for engagement with diverse Australian literature for teachers and students of English.

Much of the literature on social class and language study in schools argues that for middle-class parents and their children, languages are chosen for their capacity to offer forms of distinction that provide an edge in the global labour market. In this paper, we draw on data collected from interviews with parents and children in middle-class schools in Australia to demonstrate how a complex amalgam of elite, cultural identity and/or trade language discourses came into play to explain the choice (or not) to study a language and the choice of specific languages. For many of the parents languages provided a limited form of "civic multiculturalism", as a means of better understanding and respecting the "other". We argue that the value attributed to high status languages via this discourse, means their continued presence in schools hoping to attract middle-class parents, but their relative absence in schools with largely working-class populations, where more "practical" concerns dominate.

Purpose: In this paper we seek to provide insight as to how wisdom is, or might be, perceived and enacted in Higher Education contexts. Selected constructs of wisdom derived from the "Bhagavad Gita" provided a platform from which seven invited College of Education faculty participants considered their own framings of wisdom in the contexts of their own professional and personal lives. Design/methodology/approach: This case study has drawn upon constructs of wisdom proffered by key Indian scholars who share this epistemological stance. A three-stage process was deployed, comprised of an introductory close-ended survey, an open-ended questionnaire to determine personalised insights and semi-structured interviews to clarify and member-check the data. Findings: The participant academics' reflections offered a convergence on rich potential to pursue wisdom in Education and promote ethics, integrity, skilful action and inclusion. Furthermore, a general concern among the group of seven faculty who participated, was a perceived lack of humility in academia. Research limitations/implications: A sample of seven participants precludes generalizable findings. Some ambiguities of constructs like "Love of God", "Duty" and "Inner peace" provided space for participants to interrogate their own understandings. Originality/value: "Wisdom" in Higher Education has not been an explicit topic of research until relatively recently. Based on the present study, which entailed in-depth written responses to questions that asked faculty respondents about their perceptions of the place and role of "wisdom" in Higher Education settings, we can however, suggest possible directions for wisdom-focused research in pluricultural Higher Education contexts.

This paper explores the relationship between workforce competence, migration, and quality improvement in the Asia-Pacific through analysis of Early Childhood Education (ECE) policy texts from three East Asia Summit countries. Content (word level) analysis of salient policy texts was undertaken to address two questions: How are culture and diversity "conceptualized" in these texts? How are diverse educators "positioned" in these texts? We show that, despite differing historical trajectories of ECE, policy frameworks in all three countries fail to sufficiently acknowledge the potential contribution of migrant educators to quality improvement initiatives. We conclude by calling for greater attention to workforce mobility and diversity in ECE policies, and for further research into the untapped competence of migrant educators.

A key features of the globalised environment of the twenty-first century is that populations across a range of societies have become more diverse in culture, heritage and identity. In turn, this has led to further emphasis on the teaching of cultural understanding in schools, as exemplified by the Australian Curriculum and their equivalents in countries such as Singapore, India and New Zealand. However, educational research has tended to focus on cultural education for the students, with relatively little consideration given to the attributes required by both teachers and school leaders to frame and deliver cultural education that meets the multiple needs of twenty-first century cultural environments. This paper comprises an initial exploration of the connections between the educational concept of transcultural dispositions and culturally responsive leadership behaviours of school leaders as they work to deliver a form of cultural education that is relevant to the context of the twenty-first century.

This paper contributes to the knowledge base for preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) for contemporary multicultural classrooms. To do so, we refer to our ongoing project "See, Listen and Share: Exploring intercultural music education in a transnational experience" across three Higher Education sites (Australia and Spain). Drawing on our narrative, and PSTs' questionnaire data, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyze and code the PST data, we report on our initial experience and findings across the three sites and cultural contexts. Generalisations to other institutions cannot be made. We discuss what was taught and how it was taught in our three settings, highlighting some key highs in relation to enjoyment, and learning from culture bearers and some lows in relation to language and accompaniment. We contend that music education in teacher education courses may serve as an effective vehicle to explore cultural expressions, enabling positive attitudes towards cultural diversity.

Internationally, Intercultural Understanding (ICU) is increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The recent evidence base includes a growing academic literature and examples of specified education policy and curricula. In regards to leveraging ICU, research suggests a multi-level and longitudinal approach is needed to ensure effective and sustainable school change. Significant gaps exist in the literature about the contextual factors across all school levels that facilitate or impede the development of ICU. These gaps include research and action pertaining to school leadership. This paper draws from interviews and visual data generated in a large Australian study and focuses on the centrality of a single architectural feature of the school, the school foyer, and how principals grapple with the (re)design of these spaces to assert themselves as interculturally capable schools. Discourses of educational leadership have historically relied on well-worn leadership models of operational practices rather than explicitly framing an understanding of diversity to support intercultural capabilities. During a period of mandated Australian curriculum reform and assessment, this paper offers another way of "Doing Diversity" of interest to policy makers and school leadership keen to embed ICU in their schools while highlighting the significant role school leaders have in progressing ICU.

In response to a religiously diverse and culturally enriched Australia, this paper will discuss the instance of one Catholic primary school which has taken up the challenge of engaging in Religious Education through integrating the beliefs and practices underlying the KU Leuven's Hermeneutical Communicative Model to Religious Education. This insider reflection will provide a number of insights into the school's professional practice and practical actions that can be taken to enhance the Catholic Identity of a school, as well as the impact on both learners and educators.

This article reviews the significant and diverse range of research in applied linguistics published in Australia in the period 2008-2014. Whilst acknowledging that a great deal of research by Australian scholars has been published internationally during these seven years, this review is based on books, journal articles, and conference proceedings published in Australia. Many of these sources will be unfamiliar to an international audience, and the purpose of this article is to highlight this body of research and the themes emerging from it. The journals selected in this review include "Australian Journal of Language and Literacy," "Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL)," "BABEL," "English in Australia," "English Australia," "Papers in Language Testing and Assessment," "Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL," "TESOL in Context,", and "University of Sydney Papers in TESOL." Selected refereed proceedings are from key national conferences including: "ALAA (Applied Linguistics Association of Australia), ACTA (Australian Council of TESOL Association), ASFLA (Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association), and ALS (Australian Linguistics Society)". Our review of selected applied linguistics work revolves around the following themes: the responses to the needs of government planning and policy; the complexity of Australia's multicultural, multilingual society; the concern for recognizing context and culture as key factors in language and language learning; social activism in supporting language pedagogy and literacy programmes at all levels of education; and acknowledgement of the unique place held by Indigenous languages and Aboriginal English in the national linguistic landscape.

Higher Education institutions face specific challenges preparing graduates to live and work in transdisciplinary and transcultural environments. It is imperative for these institutions to provide their students with the skill sets that will give them the mobility and flexibility to be able to operate efficiently in different cultural and professional contexts. This position paper proposes that developing proficiency in Cultural Literacy will allow graduates of Higher Education institutions to transcend such cultural and disciplinary boundaries. In this paper we define Cultural Literacy in Higher Education as a modus operandi and a threshold concept, following Meyer and Land's understanding of the term. We also propose "Destabilisation" and "Reflection" as two strategies for teaching Cultural Literacy, and examine three case studies where these strategies were successfully embedded into teaching and learning spaces.

Since Universities Australia's Indigenous Strategy recommended a sector-wide approach to 'closing the gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, universities have grappled with how to do this. Resisting mainstream approaches to curriculum development that eschew any kind of relational accountability (Wilson, Shawn. 2008. "Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods." Manitoba: Fernwood Publishing) requires entering difficult relations of power and occupying space to transform the act of curriculum development itself. This paper is the second in a series understanding "Jindaola," a programme led by a Local Aboriginal Knowledge Holder within one Australian university. It 'hacks' the curriculum development space with staff through Aboriginal "way" towards Curriculum Reconciliation, building knowledge-based relationships between disciplinary and relevant Aboriginal Knowledge. We deliberately and controversially enact this type of relationship, by temporarily bringing the Foucauldian lens of 'heterotopia', and interview data from 30 participants, to describe how "Jindaola" usurps the neocolonial remit to embed Indigenous Knowledge, and creates and holds a counter-hegemonic space to decolonise curriculum development.

Parent-child communication about gender and sexuality has received increasing attention since the late 1990s, in response to growing awareness that open dialogue plays a vital role in sex and relationships education, and improving sexual health outcomes for families and young people. However, the insights gained from this literature have been under-researched in Multicultural and Multifaith communities. Research of this kind is vital because such families often face 'intergenerational' conflicts that emerge through the process of migration, and which largely result from differing sex and gender norms in the country of origin and country of resettlement. In this paper, we argue that current research on migration and 'intergenerational conflict' has particular import for progressing research on parent-child communication that attends to the diverse range of cultures and communities living in Australia. We draw on pilot research in South Australia with parents and children from various African countries, which offers insights for the production of culturally appropriate knowledge and support material. We also provide suggestions on how to address parent-child communication that is alive to the nuances and complexities that emerge across race, sexuality and migration.

It is all too easy to be discouraged, indeed, outraged, by the continuing state of socio-economic inequality and the fragility of "the neighbourhood" (our world) in a deteriorating, conflict-ridden environment. As educators, we struggle with the perceived lack of educational quality, relevance, and ethics of policy and practice. Education systems tend to reflect the political ideologies of the day, many of which are socially and economically divisive and hostile to equitable change. It is crucial to condemn, in the strongest manner, current racist, separatist, and discriminatory views that tend to permeate our social media space, affecting public attitudes. Comparative and international education theorists and practitioners can play a crucial role in critiquing, through the lens of critical postcolonial awareness, such socio-political constructions of society and education. The observations made in this article refer in particular to comparativists in Oceania, a region containing both large economies such as Australia, and small Pacific island states. This paper sets out an argument for "unleashing our global postcolonial consciousnesses" to effect change, acting with non-violence and empathy in an intercultural, ethical, and actionable space (Ermine, 2007; Sharma-Brymer, 2008).

Australia is forged by ongoing migration, welcoming a range of cultures, languages and ethnicities, celebrating a diverse range of the Arts. In this multicultural society, music and dance may serve as a positive medium to transmit and promote social cohesion. I argue that the inclusion of innovative and immersive practice of African music in teaching units may foster understandings of culture in education settings. In this paper I discuss tertiary students' experience in relation to the teaching and learning of African music within higher education courses. Drawing on interview data with six sessionals, questionnaire data, observation notes, anecdotal feedback and narrative reflection, I employ Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyse and code the data into two broad themes. By offering a discussion on teaching and learning African music, I invite international dialogue regarding best practice for preparing, assessing and evaluating our students to raise/enhance the quality of Musical Arts Education.

This study investigates the compositional and contextual thinking of composer, Stuart Greenbaum, and the preparatory thinking, and teaching experience of pianist, Yvonne Lau, in the preparation of the solo piano work, "First Light". Adopting a practice-informed interview approach with questions drawn from the researcher's own preparation of the work, the study discusses information the composer would like the performer to know and issues the pianist encountered while preparing the work. It also places the findings in relation to seven stages of learning a new piano work identified in the literature (Chaffin & Imreh, 2002; Viney & Blom, 2014). The paper ends with reflections on how both composer and performer intuitively discuss music elements as a whole, emphasizing their connections; how teaching (and being interviewed) offer opportunities for reflection; what can be revealed by different methodologies; the role of score instructions and program notes; and what engaging with new repertoire brings to learning about preparation of a piano work.

The importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child's family, culture, language and values is increasingly articulated in educational policy. Diversity and inclusion are central themes of the guiding principles of early childhood education and care in Australia. Children's literature can be a powerful tool for extending children's knowledge and understandings of themselves and others who may be different culturally, socially or historically. However, evidence suggests many settings provide monocultural book collections which are counterproductive to principles of diversity. This paper reports on a larger study investigating factors and relationships influencing the use of children's literature to support principles of cultural diversity in the kindergarten rooms of long day care centres. The study was conducted within an ontological perspective of constructivism and an epistemological perspective of interpretivism informed by sociocultural theory. A mixed methods approach was adopted and convergent design was employed to interpret significant relationships and their meanings. Twenty-four educators and 110 children from four long day care centres in Western Australia participated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, video-based observations, field notes, document analysis and a book audit. This study identified that current book collections in these four kindergarten rooms of long day care centres promote monocultural viewpoints and 'othering' of minority groups through limited access to books portraying inclusive and authentic cultural diversity. These findings have important social justice implications. The outcomes of this study have implications for educators, policy makers, early childhood organisations and those providing higher education and training for early childhood educators.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present emergent findings from an evaluation of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) Program showing that the program promoted appreciation of cultural diversity and inclusion of culturally diverse groups. Design/methodology/approach: The findings reported here are from the qualitative component of a mixed-method, nonrandomized, pre- and post-comparison evaluation study. Focus groups and interviews were held with school principals, teachers, program specialist staff, parents, volunteers and children at the program schools. Findings: In a culturally diverse school, the program enhanced the school's capacity to engage and include children and families from migrant backgrounds. In less diverse settings, the program provided opportunities for schools to teach children about cultural diversity. Research limitations/implications: Assessing the program's impact on multicultural education was not a specific objective of this study, rather these findings emerged as an unanticipated outcome during interviews and focus groups that explored participants' views on important changes to schools associated with the program. Thus, the quantitative component of the evaluation did not assess the extent of this program impact and further research is recommended. Practical implications: The program may have particular value in culturally diverse schools, providing benefits in terms of engagement of children and families and potentially, in the longer term, associated improvements in learning outcomes. Social implications: These findings suggest that the program can help to promote social equity and inclusion for culturally diverse groups. Originality/value: This paper highlights critical equity implications associated with school-based programs' capacity to include culturally and linguistically diverse groups.

Schools in Australia are sometimes described, categorised and defined by their locations. These statistical geographical categorisations help to determine how funding is allocated. They help to determine the types of teachers that are recruited, what kinds of teachers are attracted, how they much they are paid. Geographical categories can create perceptions that sometimes end up as stereotypes in the minds of parents and students. At times remote geographical locations are associated with disadvantage. These kinds of categorisations tend to treat schools in binary terms, or on a linear continuum, which may also be associated with value judgements that can be misleading. For example, rural schools are often thought of as disadvantaged, while city schools are therefore advantaged. In this paper the authors argue that the categorisations described above are unhelpful, limiting, misrepresent and are often unwarranted. In this paper they draw from the descriptions offered by schools for the public that are presented on the My School website. They draw a line that starts in the Adelaide suburb of Paradise and runs through to the far north of South Australia. Along the line there is a mix of metropolitan, provincial and remote schools. In analysing this data from My School, they challenge the binaries and continuums associated with geographical labels and propose instead, based on geographical concepts associated with space and place, that schools could be better described in terms of socio-cultural and geographic diversity.

In this paper, recent research into the global movement of teachers [C. Reid, J. Collins, and M. Singh. 2014. "Global Teachers, Australian Perspectives: Goodbye Mr Chips, Hello Ms Banerjee." Singapore: Springer] and their experiences in rural areas of Australia are discussed in order to make the case for a cosmopolitan education theory and practice. The paper is divided into four sections. First, is an overview of cosmopolitanism and the rural drawing on Appadurai's [1996. "Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization." Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.] conceptualisation of scapes (1996) and Vertovec's [2007. "Super-Diversity and its Implications." "Ethnic and Racial Studies" 30 (6): 1024-1054] notion of super-diversity. Second, a brief comparison of the key elements of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism are outlined in order to reveal the ways in which they differ, and why cosmopolitanism might be useful in understanding rural education. Third, a slice of data from the study of the global movement of teachers is examined to mount the argument that there is a need to consider cosmopolitan social and education theory to respond to new conditions. In doing so, rural spaces are opened up as transformative and transformed, rather than "Other" to the metropolis. The paper concludes with key points regarding the usefulness of cosmopolitanism for understanding education in rural areas.

Preparation of globally competent health graduates who have a good understanding of local and international healthcare is an important goal for allied health education. "Internationalisation of Curriculum and Internationalisation at Home" strategies are needed to prepare students to work in culturally diverse contexts. A critical review of issues, challenges and future needs in the internationalisation of allied health curricula is the focus of this paper. Current approaches to internationalisation from a range of disciplines are considered and their applicability to allied health courses is discussed. Important challenges for progress on internationalisation goals and integration of internationalisation experiences into allied health curricula are identified. Suggestions for progressing internationalisation of allied health curricula through the formal and informal curriculum are presented. Future research needs that are key to progressing internationalisation goals in allied health education are considered. Important questions that will prompt academics, clinical educators and students to consider how well internationalisation goals are being addressed in allied health education are also raised.

The increasing cultural diversity of students in Australia's schools is one of the salient changes in education over the last 30 years. In 2011, nearly half of all Australians had one or more parents born overseas, with migration from China, the Indian subcontinent and Africa increasing during the early 2000s (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). However, despite these long established patterns of exposure to a multicultural environment, the incidence of racism experienced by children in Australian schools remains highly problematic. Recent research has shown that around 70% of school students witness or experience some form of racism (Mansouri, Jenkins, Morgan & Taouk, 2009). This paper argues that, although the reasons for this persistent marginalisation of cultural difference are multivariate, the background attitudes of teacher educators cannot be ignored. It posits that, in line with recent research (Casinader, 2014), the development and awareness of transcultural modes of thinking in educators, which are inclusive and reflective of different cultural approaches, are essential for modelling an educational environment for students in which cultural difference is accepted and prized, and not held up as a point of separation. It is also argued that such a transition will be facilitated only when the existing monocultural reality of the Australian teaching profession) is acknowledged and addressed.

In the following interview, Meira Levinson (Harvard Graduate School) discusses the field of educational ethics and how it can enhance justifiable youth activism to enact citizenship education and recover democracy. She introduces readers to her philosophical approach for developing normative case studies that aim to be inclusive of divergent views on knowledge and value in schooling. Professor Levinson visited the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in August 2018, to advise the Educational Ethics: Dilemmas of Diversity Network project team. During her visit she discussed with local teachers and school leaders about how educational practices can ethically address differences, diversities and decision-making in pluralist democracies.

This paper examines the practice of five music educators in Canada and Australia who, despite the pervasiveness of ingrained Western-based pedagogy in these countries, are forging ahead with culturally diverse music programmes. Their work is presented as five 'snapshots of practice' which provide inspiration and conceptual ideas for other teachers aiming to diversify their practice in music education. While willingness and enthusiasm are paramount, it is these exemplars of innovative and resourceful practice which are crucial in assisting teachers to recognize that alternative forms of musicianship are both legitimate and essential to a well-rounded education in sonic exploration.

The higher degree of global mobility and connectivities within contemporary societies has led to increasing cultural diversity within school student cohorts. In turn, the human activities and interactions within the territories and boundaries of a school have become increasingly complex. During a 2017 study of how transcultural capabilities are being developed and utilised by teachers of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP) in Canada and Australia, one theme that emerged was the extent to which teachers felt they could or should influence their students' moral outlooks on cultural difference. Teachers often expressed spatially bounded moral views of cosmopolitanism; that is, teaching and learning about welcoming and engaging the stranger were framed within a personal, moral geography that was closely associated to defined places that were typically localised within the school community. This paper examines the moral geographies of PYP teachers to highlight the complexities, tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions embedded within the relationships between inclusion and exclusion of difference in the PYP schools. These phenomena are related to a broad range of challenges that arise as a result of the complex interactions between teachers, PYP curriculum and the principles related to engaging difference.

There is growing international concern about the extent to which teachers are prepared to work with an increasingly diverse student (and community) population. To date, research into the relationship between teacher preparation and preparedness to teach diverse learners has not focused on teacher educators' understandings about teaching to/about diversity. Such understandings can be informed by epistemic aspects of professional work. Epistemic cognitions (cognitions about knowledge and knowing) allow professionals to generate perspectives necessary to tackle new and old challenges. The social lab reported in this paper investigated 12 Australian teacher educators' perspectives about teaching to/about diversity using the 3R-Epistemic Cognition (EC) framework. The findings showed that the 3R-EC framework could be useful for capturing epistemic reflexive dialogues about teaching to/about diversity, although some aspects of the framework were identified by the teacher educators as challenging. On the basis of these identified challenges, refinements concerning communication and use of the 3R-EC framework were identified. The feedback also led to some refinements of the social lab methodology for use in the larger national study.

This paper uses ethnographic action research to explore how the objectives of the Australian Curriculum Intercultural Understanding can be achieved in a culturally diverse Year 5/6 (ages 10-12) primary school class in Melbourne. It examines whether a history unit on migration, that uses a structured historical inquiry approach, encourages culturally diverse students to develop a more critical and reflexive understanding of multiculturalism. Using Banks' multicultural framework and Bath's approach to ethnographic action research, I argue that the oral history component of a Year 5/6 history unit supported students to develop their Intercultural Understanding. I suggest that ethnographic action research is an effective approach for investigating the implementation of new teaching initiatives.

As a result of globalisation, the boundaries that once limited the trade of ideas and culture have largely dissolved. In Australia, the fruits of intercultural exchange have largely been enjoyed, yet this expansion of Australian interaction with diverse Others has posed a perceived threat to some. This parallel expansion and contraction of cultural engagement demonstrates the need for Australia to represent diversity more adequately as a part of our society. A central point of tension in this discussion is religion. This paper reports on a study that explored the question: Why is it so hard to talk about religion in public classrooms? This narrative inquiry attempts to unpack some of the challenges facing Australian educators at present. This study brings out the conflicting priorities and pressures of the secular system against student needs and puts forward an argument for the development of social literacy education that addresses education about religion in Victorian public schools.

In this paper, I describe my theoretical and experience-informed re-conceptualisations of teaching educational leadership within an Australian Masters of Education program. I describe three phases of topic (subject) re-design, across four years, initiated by me, to respond to my discomfort in my first year, with the realisation that I had initially assumed, learning about 'leadership' in education, for the majority of international students, meant applying Western theories of leadership to their context. For the last stage of redesign of the Masters of Education topic, I draw on the work of Connell (2006), Santos (2016) and Zembylas (2017) in reflecting on my own assumptions and understanding other possibilities for supporting and teaching international students. Zembylas (2017) identifies three pedagogical openings for scholars and educators in considering cognitive justice. I adopt these as possibilities for reframing teaching of 'leadership' in the Masters program.

'Asia literacy' can be loosely defined as having 'some understanding of Asia and its languages in order to engage with it and communicate with its people' (Erebus Consulting Partners, 2002). The Australian Curriculum has prioritised children's development of Asia literacy, specifically through articulating the cross-curriculum priority defined as 'Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia'. In terms of the English curriculum, this priority is realised through an emphasis on the representation of Asian voices and characters in literature that is studied in the classroom. However, previous research undertaken in schools to explore the use of multicultural literature by teachers has demonstrated an uncritical approach to literature, with teachers tending to set up binary opposites of 'Australian' and 'the Other' (Leong & Woods, 2017; Mendoza & Reese, 2001; Rodriguez & Kim, 2018). This paper will present the complexities of practice with literature centred around countries from Asia as represented through research with five Tasmanian teachers -- one early childhood teacher, three primary school teachers, and one secondary English teacher. It will examine the factors that influence teachers to use literature from Asian countries, their selection of literature, and their classroom practice with literature. Finally, it will make some recommendations for a stronger future whereby Asian peoples, voices and stories are integrated more inclusively and critically in teachers' everyday practice.