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The main goal of this paper is to depict the struggle for cultural existence in "Rabbit Proof Fence." It also reflects the cultural conflict represented in the three aboriginal girls' characters which is due to their rejection and resistance for the colonialists' culture. Besides, the paper presents the cognitive analysis of the cultural struggle and resistance in Molly's character, and it tackles the cultural resistance in "Rabbit Proof Fence" from a postcolonial point of view. Additionally, the semiotic dimension, which is based on a socio-cultural basis, is introduced in this paper.

This paper seeks to explore the risks of providing preservice teachers with professional experiences in remote communities. In particular this paper focuses on the risks associated with this kind of professional experience. Twelve pre-service teachers were interviewed whilst on a three-week practicum around Katherine and in Maningrida in the Northern Territory during 2012. The dangers outlined in this paper relate to the way their experiences continued to be mediated by stereotypes and perpetuating colonial practices. The pre-service teachers' limited understandings of Indigenous knowledges and languages are discussed before exploring the vexed issue of reverse culture shock that some of the participants identified when they returned home. The paper concludes by exploring the notion of "allies" as a way to negotiate the problematic nature of this work.

Drawing from a study that explored how international students experience cross-cultural transitions after living and studying in Melbourne for a few years, this paper, in particular, examines the participants' experiences with culture shock, social interaction, and friendship development. The findings include narratives of their personal stories and perspectives on social engagement and friendship ties with a particular focus on variables including cultural similarity, intercultural communication competence, intercultural friendship, and relational identity to influence their experiences.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study examining the existence and perceived influence of "generational collide" for teachers and leaders across three generations--Baby Boomers, Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y). The study sought to further determine if a teacher's generation, gender, school level or position influenced their beliefs about generational leadership change. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed a cross-sectional survey using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. A random sample of teachers and leaders from schools in the Sydney metropolitan area participated in a questionnaire (n = 244) and a purposive sample of eight participants from each of the three generational groups (n = 24) participated in a follow up interview. Findings: The data revealed that teachers and leaders across all three generations agreed that "generational collide" is real and is currently happening in some schools. Each generation has their own perceptions about the "collide" and often do not recognise that this may differ for other generations. In relation to the key variables, this study demonstrated that primary teachers were significantly more likely to believe that generational leadership change was happening than secondary teachers and that Baby Boomers were significantly more likely to view their staying on past retirement age as positive compared to both Gen X and Gen Y. Practical implications: The findings from this study have practical implications for system leaders charged with the responsibility of providing the supply of quality leadership for schools through effective succession planning programmes and policies. Social implications: The findings from this study have social implications for principals' (and deputy principals') professional associations who have the responsibility for the personal, professional and career welfare of principals and aspiring principals. Originality/value: This paper adds to the growing body of evidence around generational collide in schools by providing an Australian perspective on the phenomenon. Moreover, this paper raises important concerns for school leaders and administrators involved in leadership development initiatives at the micro, meso and macro levels. Teachers in each generation have specific beliefs around promotion, career pathways, knowledge transfer and talent retention that need to be recognised and considered in future succession planning.

This paper outlines a case study of four Vietnamese students who have just completed their exchange semester at RMIT University, Melbourne. Results indicate that the students appreciate multiple benefits brought by this experience, including a developing sense of language use, responsibility, dependence, self-awareness, integration, and problem-solving skills. But to them, the journey to Melbourne has especially opened their mind to the issues of cultural diversity and sensitivity, which they have never imagined before coming to Australia. The term "culture shock" might be best suited for them in the early days. What experiences have they gone through? What are the pros and cons of being an exchange student? How have they overcome their problems? How might these challenges contribute to their future plan? How do they conceptualize the term "global citizen"? What is their advice for those who want to go on an exchange program? Adopting an exploratory case study approach, this study will give a comprehensive picture on the experiences of these four Vietnamese students.

This paper provides a media analysis of three interrelated sets of newspaper articles dealing with youth, schooling and violence. Understanding the media as a dominant and powerful cultural text that creates the realities it describes, the paper takes a critical view of the 'standpoint' of recent media representations of the Cronulla (Sydney, Australia) riots, gang violence in schools, and issues of education amid broader concerns with security in an "age of terror". The paper draws attention to the polarising media discourses that demonise young Muslim men as the "other"--violent and dangerous--and advocate for "ethnic" integration of this "other" over "progressive education" or "multiculturalism". Such reductionist sociology is presented as highly problematic in its homogenising and inferiorising of minority cultures and in its silencing of particular issues imperative in understanding and addressing contemporary expressions of violence. The paper calls for a more nuanced interpretation of issues of culture and violence that, in particular, acknowledges how masculinity politics are implicated in current manifestations of violence. (Contains 2 notes.)

Within the context of higher education, it is the international student who travels to another country to study who is typically identified as the subject at risk of culture shock. This paper attempts to go further by suggesting that international students studying in their home country with an overseas institution may also experience culture shock as an effect of this engagement. To support this contention, the paper reports findings of an interpretive case study of a group of masters' degree students in Singapore taught by an Australian university in partnership with a local provider.

Schooling markets prioritize the needs of valued "customers". In Australia, this has resulted in a proliferation of learning interventions aimed at attracting and holding students perceived to fall into this category, and managing those who don't. In this paper, I attempt two main tasks: a description of the large-scale processes generating increasing customization in education markets, and an examination of the localized effects of a customized learning programme for young people who have left school or who have low attendance rates. This examination investigates the possibility that these young people are set to become modernity's outcasts, as described by Bauman (2004). He argues that an inevitable outcome of modernization and economic progress is the creation of "wasted lives", or individuals who are no longer able to make a living because their labour is made redundant in markets that operate on a global scale. Close attention to an example of customized learning provided an opportunity to assess this risk. I claim that new forms of customization in schooling produce new forms of differential provision, leading to success in global labour markets for some, and redundancy or "wasted lives" for others, and that the type of provision afforded by these new forms of customization is largely determined by the relationship between curriculum and pedagogy. The examination of this relationship in one example of customization describes some of the complexities faced by teachers in these settings, and the epistemic opportunities made possible by recognizing and valuing students' backgrounds, in this case the backgrounds of Indigenous students.

International students have become an important part of many universities, both through the income they provide and the diversity they bring to student populations. Studying in a foreign country can be challenging, requiring students to adapt to unfamiliar educational cultures. With the integration of online technologies into higher education, this can raise an additional set of challenges. This paper presents research that explored Chinese international students' experiences of studying online at an Australian university, drawing on qualitative data collected from focus groups and interviews with Chinese students, interviews with their Australian teachers and course documentation. The findings indicate a strong culture clash between these students' educational dispositions, shaped by their previous learning experiences in China, and the online pedagogic practices, which were underpinned by a constructivist approach. This resulted in detrimental educational and psychological consequences, with participants reporting limited development of their knowledge, and feelings of isolation and anomie. The findings suggest that investigating the interplay between learners' prior and current educational experiences is important in understanding how students experience teaching practices.

In this paper I discuss some of the approaches that I take in challenging student teachers to understand education in global context, rather than in a decontextualized or instrumental way. These approaches draw on my experience of being an educator from the "global South" (the Caribbean) now working in the "global North" (Australia). As the first black teacher that most Australian student teachers have encountered in their entire education, I find that I can offer them provocative educational narratives and questions stemming from a lifetime career in education, studying and working in various roles in schools, colleges, universities and ministries of education in Jamaica, Grenada, Hong Kong, the UK, the USA and Australia. I set out to disrupt the preconceptions of my students as a starting point in a collective journey of thinking differently about education.

In Western Australia, an action research project engaged White teachers and Aboriginal teacher aides in collaborative forums about the use of Aboriginal English in school and the development of two-way bi-dialectal teaching practices to support literacy acquisition among Aboriginal students. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal project participants describe the struggle to create cross-cultural understanding and the resulting improvements in classroom practices. (SV)

Aggressive marketing of professional courses by Australian higher education institutions has led to increased foreign student populations. A hypothetical case is presented in which a course marketed to and attracting a specific population was found to be inappropriate, taking into consideration contextual and cultural issues. Viewed from this perspective, the relevance of a number of other courses was questioned. (Author/MSE)

Examines how "big picture" scenarios of world futures in the new millennium that frame policymakers' views have an impact on language, culture, and education. Some of these scenarios predict homogenization, whereas others foretell conflict. In this changing scenario, the social and political effects of language planning and English as a Second Language are important. (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education) (Author/CK)

Describes and criticizes five principles developed as part of a bilingual schooling model and presents eight components of a broadened domain theory of bicultural schooling. Main purpose behind strategy of hard or soft domain separation in bicultural schools is to create curricular space for less powerful languages and cultures that are in danger of being colonized by dominant cultures. (SM)

Emphasizes the importance of developing an Aboriginal form of education by Aboriginal teachers. Expresses concern that the western bureaucratic educational system will not permit a suitable Aboriginal system to develop. Describes the Deakin-Batchelor Teacher Education Program as an example of action research in Aboriginal teacher education. Discusses the program's structure, intent, and principles. (DK)

This article concentrates a query as to the facility of current transnationalism in coming to grips with Cold War culture as a world phenomenon bound by both time and space. On the one hand we confront its forceful synchronicities, inspiring but also requiring aesthetic congruities across substantial, sometimes hitherto unrelated portions of the world, and, on the other, its calculated silencings and censorship, enforcing asynchrony and differentiated cultural production, readerships and aesthetic formations on polarised political ground. Exploring little-traced, transverse literary connections between postcolonial Australia and the metropolitan Second World, this paper foregrounds the dissident practices of mid-century poetry, centring the work of settler Australian communist poet Dorothy Hewett. Can such transverse valency help us displace the moribund bipolar model of the cultural Cold War, in favour of a more worldly poetics of disruption, able to speak to the as-yet unrealised utopic horizons that propelled the conflict? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National identity and schooling are predicated on a particular yet ill-defined view of culture. To counter "popular" and "high" culture polarizations and arguments for cultural pluralism, this paper proposes that curricula be designed for student access to forms and symbols defining Australian culture through discourse and artistic self-expression. Includes 19 references. (MLH)

Pilot research on community conflict resolution, conducted in a local government area in southern Sydney in late 2006, revealed paradoxical findings: the simultaneous presence of both high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of the area's culturally diverse population; and the prevalence of prejudice against Arab and Muslim residents and visitors to the area. Many respondents, who supported cultural diversity, saw Arab and Muslim Australians as an exception and even a threat to harmonious community relations. Particularly striking was the anxiety and anger caused by their apparent large numbers, seen to be taking over certain public recreational spaces. This paper explores the contradictions in these findings in light of other contemporary Australian research and identifies complex and difficult issues to be addressed by research and by local government. In particular, the paper discusses the need to address the interconnections between both everyday multiculturalisms and everyday racisms, to distinguish between 'victim' claims amongst diverse communities, and to ground research and policies on 'place-sharing' in Indigenous sovereignties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2013, the Australian Federal Labor Government releasedCreative Australia. This document was described as the first national Cultural Policy statement in 20 years since the publication by a previous Labor Government ofCreative Nationin 1994. However, within 6 months of the launch of this new policy, a Coalition (Conservative) Federal government was elected in September 2013. Up till now, Coalition Governments have rejected the need for a national cultural policy, so the future forCreative Australiamay in fact be both contested and limited. Indeed, during the previous Federal Coalition Government a ‘cultural war’ erupted between the government and artists and intellectuals, over the latter’s desire for an Australian cultural policy. This paper addresses questions around the process of developing this new national cultural policy, why it occurred, and what future it might have now there is a new Coalition Federal Government in power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception that young women are disengaged from feminist politics has provoked a great deal of tension between feminist generations. Recent feminist research into generational change has largely avoided this tension by focusing on the shifting meanings of feminism and the discrepancy between young women's reluctance to identify as “feminists” and their general acceptance of feminist attitudes toward gender issues. Nevertheless, in an era when gender equity goals seem to be if not slipping backwards then lacking urgency, young women are less likely to identify with a collective feminist politics than are older women. Underpinned by the findings of a major study of the attitudes toward work, family, and retirement of three generations of Australian women, this paper develops an approach that helps explain this reluctance. Drawing on the work of Karl Mannheim, the paper suggests that the cultural currents shaping the consciousness of different generations of women impact significantly on gender identity. The implications of this cultural shift are considered in the context of feminist politics and the contemporary “culture wars.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses a government health department's attempt to implement a community development strategy in a remote Aboriginal Australian community after identifying deficiencies in one of its health programmes. The reluctance of non-Aboriginal departmental clinic staff to share control of health decisions with Aboriginal participants, together with the deeply embedded power inequalities, undermined the development process and the achievement of project objectives. After lengthy critical reflection and supported by the project team and other community agencies, a group of community members addressed the priority issue they identified with a community-owned strategy in opposition to health professionals. This study raises questions about the capacity of government departments to practise community development, particularly given the unequal power relations, and their reluctance to share power between such departments and marginalized, disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent qualitative research confirms that rural and regional Australians do not enjoy equitable access to social care services. This paper discusses the social impacts of class and cultural change on rural communities, drawing upon qualitative data generated during a multi-state study of rural social care provision, undertaken in four Australian states during 2005 - 2006. Participants were drawn from a wide range of professional groups, including social workers; nurses, including Aboriginal health workers; community development and local government officers; teachers, including student welfare coordinators; police; ambulance officers; emergency services workers; and medical practitioners. Findings based on the Victorian data suggest that existing policies are failing to address cultural and institutional barriers to equitable service provision. Further research is needed to identify successful strategies that service providers are utilising to overcome existing cultural barriers and institutional hurdles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern over the reliability of conventional poverty studies has focused attention on the need to demonstrate that those identified as poor are actually experiencing hardship. This paper takes a step in this direction by examining poverty using a living standards approach derived from the literature on deprivation and social exclusion. Deprivation - defined as an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities - has emerged as a way of identifying who is missing out on what the community regards as the necessities (or essentials) of life. Social exclusion - which exists when individuals do not participate in key activities in society - has opened up new areas of inquiry relating to a lack of connectedness between individuals, the communities in which they live, and key economic and social processes. The findings indicate that many Australians face deprivation and exclusion in numerous aspects of their lives, and that those defined as poor in income terms are different from those who are deprived or excluded. The low overlap between the three indicators implies that they all have a role to play in documenting the extent of social disadvantage and helping to identify the factors that contribute to its various manifestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with representations of people entering Australia to request asylum. The study critically analyses the role of social categorisation in descriptions about these people, drawn from texts available through the Australian print media. The aim is to examine constructions that constitute marginalising practices toward people who request asylum in Australia. It is argued that traditional approaches to social categorisation have a number of shortcomings, particularly in the context of an examination of potentially marginalising discourse. A discursive psychological approach is adopted for the purpose of analysing certain categorisations and identifying the social actions they constitute. Sample extracts are drawn from media articles and specific categories examined include "illegal immigrants", "boat people", and related category labels. It is argued that certain types of categorisation can support and encourage specific actions and, in particular, specific marginalising practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two streams of research, culture war and system justification, have proposed that religious orientations and personality, respectively, play critical roles in political orientations. There has been only limited work integrating these two streams. This integration is now of increased importance given the introduction of behavior-genetic frameworks into our understanding of why people differ politically. Extant research has largely considered the influence of personality as heritable and religiosity as social, but this view needs reconsideration as religiosity is also genetically influenced. Here we integrate these domains and conduct multivariate analyses on twin samples in the U.S. and Australia to identify the relative importance of genetic, environmental, and cultural influences. First, we find that religiosity's role on political attitudes is more heritable than social. Second, religiosity accounts for more genetic influence on political attitudes than personality. When including religiosity, personality's influence is greatly reduced. Our results suggest religion scholars and political psychologists are partially correct in their assessment of the "culture wars"—religiosity and ideology are closely linked, but their connection is grounded in genetic predispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural policy, and arts funding in particular, has been a site of much contention and discussion in Australia over the past decade. The events of the past two years took this to another level showing major ideological schisms in the present political approach. While the established arts sector was protected and consolidated, the emerging sector, individual artists, and small organisations were all negatively affected. The policy changes demonstrate the implicit challenges of direct political intervention in arts funding. What this period highlights also though is the vulnerability of artists and the philosophical contradictions around the nature of arts funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurable aspects of child health and wellbeing for children in same-sex parented families show that these children develop well, overall. Increasingly however, it is understood that stigma can have a negative impact on their health within a same sex family context. The aim of this study is to understand how child health in same-sex parented families is constructed by same-sex attracted parents and what this teaches us about the impact of stigma on child health in this context. Families from across Australia were sampled from a larger study of child health and wellbeing. We used family interviews, which took place between January and August 2013. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes. We report on the data from 11 parents with 10 children. Families presented stories of heteronormative conflict that arose from their position in society. Through family constructs, gender assumptions, discrimination and challenging interactions with institutions this heteronormative conflict had a significant influence on child health, sometimes through the generation of broader familial stress. Resilience building was used by parents to construct a positive environment for child health by combating the lack of understanding and discrimination seen at a societal level. Resilience that is developed to combat stigma provides significant benefits, particularly in a heteronormative world where traditional assumptions about families dominate. The anticipation of stigma, and heteronormative pressures, can stimulate same-sex attracted parents to prepare their children for potential negativity. This should be supported through appropriate school programs and considered political leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates discrepancies between narratives of national independence in public discourses surrounding the First World War and narratives of loyalty in school textbooks in Queensland, Australia. Five textbooks commonly used in schools from 1916 to 1936 are analyzed in order to ascertain how the First World War was represented to pupils via the history curriculum. This article argues that, although public discourses were in a state of flux, and often viewed Australia as a country that was becoming increasingly independent of its colonial ruler Great Britain, textbooks that maintained a static view continued to look to Great Britain as a context in which to teach national history to school pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in many countries, such as Germany, Turkey, the United States and Japan the history/culture wars of the past two decades have increased public interest in what is taught in schools. This has resulted in rigorous debates in the general community, encouraged and sustained through regular media coverage. Partly as a response to this, History has been designated as a separate subject in the first wave of planning and implementation of the Australian National Curriculum. Two of the reasons for this include first, to recognise the importance of teaching historical skills as a distinct subject; and second there is an ongoing bipartisan political interest in privileging history disciplinary knowledge and content to ensure that national history narratives are taught to students. To contribute meaningfully towards the development and implementation of a National Curriculum, it is important to understand past curriculum constructions, so that the disciplinary knowledge and content of history remains independent, and not subsumed within current (or future) political trends. Based on examples of national history from the Queensland Social Studies syllabus and government endorsed sourcebooks in the lead-up to the 1988 Bicentennial of British colonisation of the Australian continent, this article examines the influence and role of multiculturalism in History teaching in primary schools. Particular attention is paid to Indigenous representations and British heritages, as an example of two groups that have often been represented as binaries to each other throughout Australian history. An analysis of the curriculum materials illuminates the differences between multiculturalism and history—highlighting how the two are merged at the expense of accurate historical knowledge and concepts, particularly in the area of national history. This study will demonstrate that as a result of the infiltration of multiculturalism into history content within the Social Studies curriculum, historical knowledge becomes silenced in the school curriculum – resulting in vague and sometimes historically inaccurate information being presented to students; and the privileging of certain types of multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing push from political parties, both conservative and Labor, and sections of the political class—opinion makers, journalists, and private think tanks—to equate knowledge of history with the concept of a 'national inheritance'. Implicit in this argument is the idea that history is something to which we owe fealty, that it is a body of knowledge, a national canon of events and stories, which we should embrace as a demonstration of patriotism; Anzac Day being the prime example. From a range of perspectives, this essay attempts to document, understand and critically evaluate this shift in Australia's public culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]