Write Me In: Inclusive Texts in the Primary Classroom.

As much as any society of people, Australians represent themselves as equals. Yet few Australians are able to fit the widely circulated myths about what is normal, valuable, and desirable in their society. This book enables teachers and their students to challenge the multiplicity of texts that combine to tell Australians who they are and who they should be, and to construct new, truly inclusive, texts in their place. The book concerns itself with three things: differences among people, and the responses to them; the cultural context, and the messages that it circulates about these differences; and education, and the contribution that teachers and schools make to the way students learn to think about the diversity of the society they are part of. The book is divided into the following chapters: Introduction: Educating Raoul and Rifka and Rita: Difference, Cultural Context and the Challenges of Education; (1) Interesting Times: Contemporary Contexts and Traditions in Difference and Schooling; (2) Making a Difference to Differences: The Key Principles of a Transformative Approach; (3) What Happens Next? Doing Transformative Analysis; (4) Pitfalls, Perils and Possibilities: Maximizing Transformative Potential; (5) Transformative Tracks: New Ways of Dealing with Difference; (6) Towards Transformative Classrooms; (7) Traditional Days in Different Ways: Creating Transformative Classroom Texts; and Conclusion: Transformative Analysis and Counternarratives: Other Days, Other Ways. Contains a glossary. (NKA)