AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS
Standard 1: Know students and how they learn
This chapter encourages readers to think more critically about child development, and the importance of questioning the universality of particular truth claims. Contextualist approaches help us to understand the relations between culture and human development and to consider alternative perspectives and question taken-for-granted assumptions about human development.
Standard 4: Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
This chapter highlights the importance of deconstructing dominant images of childhood to create inclusive learning environments in diverse educational settings. In particular, inclusive play practices begin with the recognition that children's play is a culturally structured activity.
I guess just always being ready to question yourself. Like why things are done the way they are and not making assumptions of where those actions or behaviours are coming from. And constantly being self-aware of where your values and beliefs are coming from versus theirs, I think is a major part of working in a cross-cultural experience. Yeah, just trying your best to understand the context and the situation that the children and the community members are living in so that what you do is relevant for their lives.
(Sam, undergraduate student, reflecting on what it means to teach in a cross-cultural context)Introduction
In the contemporary global context of social, cultural, technological, political and economic integration, schools have become increasingly complex and diverse settings. Many Western countries, including Australia, have continued to see an increase of new immigrants, particularly from non-European-heritage countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2013). Within these culturally diverse societies, schools, and in particular teachers, are tasked with the challenge of not only fostering an environment of respect for diversity, but also nurturing a sense of global citizenship through their teaching. However, given these responsibilities, it is essential to consider how we as educators develop or question our own perspectives and how this informs our approach to teaching children in culturally diverse educational settings. Fundamental to this process is a critical awareness of our own constructions of childhood and culture.
This chapter examines the experiences of a small group of undergraduate students from a Canadian university during an overseas cross-cultural service-learning placement in Thailand in relation to the ways in which the experience became a catalyst towards a more emergent understanding of childhood and culture.