LITERACY EDUCATION

ASSESSMENT DETAILS

Item 1

Critique essay (1500 words with references attached) [GTS2.1.5]

100%

The essay will address all the criteria stated in the criteria sheet found at the end of this unit outline. Within the criteria an emphasis will be placed on:

 reliability of the information presented;

 diversity and depth of references used for critical analysis; and

 accuracy of the in-text citations and end of essay reference list.

Students will write a critique essay addressing a contemporary education issue affecting one of the following groups:

 Indigenous Australians;

 special needs learners; and

 learners from multicultural backgrounds.

The essay is to analyse and evaluate three quality general information resources and three scholarly information resources about a contemporary education issue affecting one of those groups. Students’ critiques of each information source must include all of the following elements:

 Identification and context information

 Summary and evaluation of the key ideas in that source as they relate to the focal educational issue for your chosen learner group

There should also be a general integrative section discussing the relative similarities and differences between the six information sources and how they facilitate exploration of the focal educational issue.

Assignments will be submitted at the beginning of the tutorial in week 12. Anonymous (student number only) assignments will be distributed to another member of the tutorial group for assessment. Each assignment will be returned to its author with written comments by the end of the tutorial so that a final version of the assignment can be submitted during the final tutorial in week 13.

The assignment will be assessed as either a non-graded pass or as a fail with no marks allocated.

SOLUTION

How contemporary education issues are affecting learners from multicultural backgrounds?

The basic principal behind education is to teach an individual in the best possible manner so that his/ her learning can benefit the economy as well as broader community through his/ her participation (Anderson, 1983). An individual’s linguistic, humane and socio-economic background should not act as a bottleneck in one’s education. Though, there are certain education institutions which follow contemporary methods of teaching and give birth to inequalities on the basis of social class, caste and culture, but still objecting social justice on the face of it is next to impossible for these institutions.            In order to bring both social and educational effective positive changes in the environment of an institution, it is quite essential to undertake transformative practices. For this purpose, it is essential that institutions and educators enable themselves with resources and experiences which are necessary to face the challenge of social inequalities existing in the environment. An unambiguous desire to have a learning environment, where social experiences such as discrimination and relegation does not have any place, has been expressed by many students and parents. In addition they also want recognition for their cultural background as well. In order to achieve this objective, adoption of an integrated approach is very important. In this approach institutions, educators, students, parents as well as community is expected to bring down the impact of social bottlenecks and challenges of cross cultural negotiation through strategic partnership.

Schools and those providing educational and support services are always faced by challenges due to diverse multicultural groups, children with disabilities, and gay and lesbian youth. For schools to provide a culturally relevant, respectful and affirming teaching environment, it is essential to develop an educational curriculum that enhances awareness, knowledge, and skills for students. For achieving that, there is a need for development of culturally sensitive assessment and intervention stratergy, professional training, and multicultural consultation etc. Actions targeted on the areas of awareness, knowledge and skill development can result in enhancing a diverse environment within the schools. The diversity in the students and communities can be looked upon as an exciting and wonderful element of the world in which we live, rather than a hindrance in the educational system. Further increasing and affirming the cultural diversity within the school setting is the involvement of parents in the school community. Their active participation will link the school staff with the diverse learner and hence contribute to diversity.

There is one small case of Blackwood School which reflects the negativity about multicultural education system in the society. An imminent closure was declared by a public school in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne in July 2004. Blackwood College, which had more than half of its students of Arab origin and was serving students from diverse culture and language, was discriminated socially as well as economically. There was a steady downfall in the enrolments in past many years, moreover in comparison to Victorian state averages, its attainment of an average student fell drastically. Many complex and interlinked factors led to the sudden closure of the college. Apart from lack of resources to bring structural changes in the college there was one major factor which brought Blackwood College in a tangle of the complex politics of Australian multiculturalism. The Blackwood School was termed as a “‘sour ethnic ghetto’ dominated by Arabic-speaking Muslim students and their families (Bolt, 2002) and was home to violent Lebanese ‘ethnic gangs’ (Bolt, 2004a) by a reputable yellow journalist in 2002. When the school announced its closure, the same journalist wrote that Blackwood College had been ‘killed by ethnic division’ (Bolt, 2004b), contending that multicultural educational policies had resulted in a ‘too-heavy concentration of Muslim students, particularly Lebanese’ (Bolt, 2004b), ‘trapping immigrant students in their own closed culture’ and leading to a rejection of Australia (Bolt, 2004a). The reputation of being educationally ineffective isolated from mainstream Australian society and serving only one ethnic group was given to the school because of such media representations. The media reports brought so much of negative popularity for the school that even the announcement of the closure brought negative favour from Victorian Opposition Spokesman for Education.

Three major reasons that support the multicultural education in Australia are the social realities of Australian society, the influence of culture and ethnicity on human growth and development, and the conditions of effective teaching and learning. These reasons emphasise on the need of multicultural education as a part of education system and also answer to question of what its content focus should be and how it should be taught. Each reason brings out a parameter for multicultural education. It plays the important role of justifying and giving direction to the said multicultural education.

Learning the method of interacting and understanding people from different ethnicity, race and culture is incumbent for students. The world is becoming small day by day. The diversity and interdependency is increasing globally. Yet, most of the students spend their early years of their lives in enclaves which are ethnically and culturally isolated or encapsulated (Cahill, 1996). This habit of staying in an isolated environment makes them inadequate to operate properly in an environment which is multicultural. Intense interracial and interethnic pessimism, anxiousness, fears, failures, and hostilities are some major obstructions in cross cultural interactions.  Imposing rules of social etiquette from one cultural system onto another may also result in negative attitude, values, and expectations which may end up as cultural blunders. Multicultural education system follow the approach where education is imparted by using cross-cultural communication, interpersonal relations, perspective taking, contextual analysis, understanding alternative points of view and frames of reference, and analyzing how cultural conditions affect values, attitudes, beliefs, preferences, expectations and behaviours.  It also assists students by making them familiar with a culture without creating a hasty feeling about their intrinsic worth. To attain the goal of multicultural education system, it is very important that students are given ample opportunities to practice their cultural competence and to interact with different ethnic peoples, experiences, and situations.

The movement of including cultural pluralism in school programs is, in a way, an effort to correct the sin of omission and commission. This can be done by providing the students with the information about the cultural history and contributions of various ethnic groups towards society that have been mainly excluded from the instructional material and curriculum, thereby correcting the sin of omission. And secondly bringing more accurate and significant information about those groups and replacing the previous distorted and biased images, hence correcting the sin of commission. These are the major areas of concern for multicultural education, as students have very less information about the history, culture, and heritage, development of society and contribution of various groups in Australia. The information that is easily available to students over mass media are often inaccurate, distorted, superficial, onedimentional, biased and incomplete thus often portraying an inappropriate image.

The need for students to learn about the ethnic groups’ contributions to the history, life, and culture of Australia more accurately is reinforced by the fact that the caricatures of more popular and prominent ethnic groups and their contribution are more persistent in the society. Moreover there is restricted interaction between different ethnic groups. Thus, a major goal of multicultural education focuses on historical backgrounds, languages, cultural characteristics, contributions, critical events, significant individuals, and social, political, and economic conditions of various majority and minority ethnic groups so that students have a clear and open views about all the groups rather than a biased or prejudice views.

The million dollar question here is we courageous enough to transform the Global Education system so that it is able to serve the needs of all the students from different culture and origin. The path of attaining multicultural educational environment is very long and full of obstacles. Though the conceptualization in theories is progressing in a nice manner but still institutions have not taken even the first step to attain the same in their practise. In order to attain the environment of multicultural education there are numerous challenges and problem which educators have to face. But one thing is sure, multicultural education will make the world a better place to live as it will wipe out the evil social practises like discrimination and differentiation among individuals as they will learn about cross-cultural communication, interpersonal relations, perspective taking, contextual analysis, understanding alternative points of view and frames of reference, and analyzing how cultural conditions affect values, attitudes, beliefs, preferences, expectations, and behaviours.

References

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. London: Verso.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2002). Educational attainment: literacy and numeracy

among school students. Australia Now: Australian Social Trends 2002, Canberra:

Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2001). 2001 Census of Population and Housing. Canberra:

Bolt, A. (2002). Schooled to fail. Herald Sun, 16 December.

Cahill, D. (1996). Immigration and Schooling in the 1990s. Canberra: Australian Government

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