Session Information
Contribution
Description: This paper uses the case of schooling in contemporary Australia to address the question of the ways in which education can help to construct a sense of identity and belonging, an issue of evident interest to discussions of the ways in which education can help to build European community in a newly configured and imagined Europe. As a consequence of vigorously pursued immigration policies in recent decades, coupled with an increasing influx of refugees, the Australian population is now much more diverse than before. Currently one in four Australians was born overseas. Consequently primary schools cater to children from an increasingly wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The central research question concerns the meaning of being Australian as understood by contemporary young Australians in their final year of primary school.
Methodology: The data used in this paper are derived from a qualitative study of the attitudes and perceptions of more than 400 children in South Australia. Researchers used small group interviews in which the children were invited to speak freely about their ideas about the country in which they live. Participants were drawn from across the social spectrum in terms of geography, wealth, ethnic and racial background. The group mirrored the social mix of the state as a whole. They were all around 12 years old. Interviews were tape recorded and later transcribed and organised for analysis using the NUD*IST software package.The analytic approach taken derives from Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and place, together with the Foucaultian notion that the capacity to act - here in the sense of speaking about feelings - is derived from the discourses made available through cultural experience of which schooling forms one part
Conclusions: This paper argues that the message of the new multicultural Australia has been well received by the young people and their school communities. Particularly striking was their readiness to include Indigenous peoples and to acknowledge their rights regarding land. A more disturbing finding concerned the absence of historical knowledge evidenced by the young informants - not just in terms of the contested state of Australian history but also that of the more recent arrivals. Ultimately the paper argues for renewed attention to the role of history in generating young people's awareness of the shared past as well as of the particular historical trajectories that have led to the current social mix. This curriculum development is urged in the interests of building a sense of place informed by all the previous experiences of its peoples.
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