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The Diversity: An Educational Advantage Project

The multicultural nature of Australian society is reflected in our schools,

and students’ diverse cultural backgrounds create new challenges, as

well as new opportunities, for school management, curriculum design and

teaching practice.

The Diversity: An Educational Advantage Project is focused on

equipping schools to ensure the best possible educational outcomes for

all students, to foster positive intercultural relations in schools and to

enhance community life through strengthening the links between schools

and their cultural communities.

In a context of increasing multiculturalism there has, at the same time, been

a degree of hardening against the concept itself, focusing on certain cultural

groups such as Asians and, in a more complex manner, people of Arabic

background. In this uncertain social climate the project began in partnership

with a local community association, working with a number of Melbourne

public secondary schools with high levels of enrolment of students from

Arabic backgrounds. This early intervention work involved linking a cultural

diversity facilitator with the schools to facilitate the engagement of the Arabic

community with the life of the school.

Then Prof. Mansouri in partnership with both community associations and

philanthropic organizations, won Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage

Project scheme funding. This four-year funding, along with contributions from

each of the other partners, enabled longitudinal research involving parents,

teachers and students in culturally diverse schools. The project involved

297 students, 80 teachers and 44 parents and found that the effects of

racism experienced by 15- and 16-year-old Australians of Arab background,

particularly since 9/11, have been underestimated. For example, Lebanese

students in focus groups outlined difficulties about having multiple identities

and how this lent itself to misrecognition as un-Australian:

“I don’t like being, you know, Lebbo and English, ’cause like, I’m

both, right, and I still get teased, see no one teases me, ‘oh you’re

Aussie, you’re half this that’, they always come to me ‘oh you’re

Lebbo you’re Lebbo’, like that, especially Aussies, like they don’t

know that I’m half, so they always go ‘you’re Lebbo’.”

“Especially the media, ’cause the media, they show us as bad

people through the news.”

That research underpins the resources described below.

Model of best practice

This concise document is targeted at those leading change and

introduces a ‘whole-of-school’ model of multicultural education that is

both multidimensional and transformative. This is a lead document for

the project in that it demonstrates the essential link between schools

and the social environment and graphically illustrates how the resources

introduced integrate and support one another. It provides an overview

of the theories behind the model and includes an audit that can be

undertaken by schools to gauge where they need to focus attention

in implementing it. More specifically, it brings three key approaches

together within one framework to help schools manage and positively

embrace cultural and linguistic diversity:

• engagement of an in-school cultural diversity facilitator

• active research and evaluation with students, teachers and parents

• development of teaching resources supported by professional

development.

In doing so, the model sets out strategies to foster social inclusiveness

and reflexive practice on the part of those developing the curriculum,

with a view to enhancing educational outcomes.

Parent handbook

This resource is for school staff or other community members looking to

engage multicultural communities more closely in the life of the school.

A series of sequential modules outline why it matters to engage with the

community beyond the school gates and note aspects to be considered

in making engagement successful. These modules are thematic and

include sessions to help new parents understand the Australian school

system as well as providing opportunities for parents to be active players

in delivering the curriculum. While the parent handbooks are focused on

Arabic communities, these modules introduce a process that could be

used effectively in a range of cultural contexts.

For example, it provides a step-by-step guide on how to engage with

people from non-English speaking backgrounds with regard to arranging

meetings with parents and facilitating their participation in school

events. Additionally, the modules emphasize the need for educators to

be aware of different expectations from parents regarding education.

Teacher support materials

Our most innovative resource is our online, interactive website, which

provides secondary school teachers with insights into the educational

experiences of culturally diverse students and how teachers are

responding to some of their needs.

Through a series of themes

– identity and belonging, relationships at school, stereotypes and

cultural perceptions, cultural and ethnic tensions, cultural diversity and

multiculturalism, and curriculum, school and culture – teachers can

access reflective tasks as well as classroom resources.

A good example of the interactive nature of these tasks is the capacity

to download snapshot videos and create personalized libraries of

materials on each theme that challenges racism and celebrates diversity.

Further, in line with the whole-of-school approach each theme can be

explored through additional links to material that provides the student,

teacher and parent perspective.

Teacher workbook

A printed teacher workbook provides both a supplement to the website

and an alternative when Internet access is a problem. While the website

provides links to a wide range of resources that teachers can use in their

classrooms, the workbook contains a series of curriculum units that have

been developed specifically for the project and link directly to Australia

curriculum frameworks.

The teacher workbook contains two modules with four units each:

•

Finding my place

seeks to explore identity, cultural diversity,

citizenship and cultural stereotypes in the media

•

Community relationships

encompasses the expectations of the self,

parents and teachers, how to develop relationships at school, and

both school culture and ethnic tensions.

The aim is to help students to engage in research about cultural

diversity, consider experiences from diverse backgrounds, recognize and

experience difference and, most importantly, identify and explain issues

from both ‘Aussie’ and culturally diverse perspectives with a view to

finding shared solutions.

Since the completion of the project, all three components have been

combined in a volume titled

Building Bridges: Creating a Culture of

Diversity.

Both the project and the book have received praise from ARC

and fellow educators.

The project represents an example of transformative research as

the book, upon publication, was distributed to all Victorian schools as

a practical teaching and learning resource in the area of multicultural

education and intercultural understanding, and is listed as a key resource

for challenging racism on the Victorian Multicultural Commission website.

The website and

Building Bridges

have also transcended the

Australian school sector. They are advertised as a resource by local

and international CSOs, such as the Centre for Multicultural Youth

and

Volunteer Canada

amongst others.

Professor Fethi Mansouri with student participants

Image: Simon Fox

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