Humanities, Mathematics, Technology, Interpersonal Development & Civics and Citizenship Resources

The following is an exposition of the methodology used by one Year 9 SOSE teacher in a class with many students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The task set for the students was to write and give a presentation on an historical or contemporary theme. This teacher shows how themes of cultural diversity and tolerance can be incorporated into existing curriculum. Here the SOSE teacher has drawn upon her own, and her students’ experiences to draw out and confront issues of values and racist beliefs.

TEACHER: The kids did peer assessment, peer feedback stuff, where they gave each other a grade and talked about what was helpful about what they’d learnt, and where they’d like to learn a bit more, and how they’d like to learn a bit more. We had one kid in the class who’d only been in the country for three months when he came over to us and his language skills were still very limited and computer skills were not real flash. And they supported each other and helped each other through it and created a fantastic assignment.

Discussion and teacher questioning on three topics follow: Racism in America; the Gulf War; and Islam and Christianity.

  • Racism in America: What is racism? Is it putting someone down? Is it racist if I put my husband down because he is black? What should we do if someone says something racist? Tell a teacher, ignore, get physical? When looking at racism we should look at culture to consider history, songs, terminology such as “nigger”…
  • Iraq versus America, the Gulf War: The teacher stressed that this was not to become a discussion of blame. “Can you do this without hatred?” she asked, and urged the two students who had chosen this topic to strive for balance and fairness and to look at historical and media themes, beyond their own political beliefs. She asked the class where they and their families were during the Gulf War? This lead to a short discussion of life stories and the teacher mentioned her experiences of watching the Gulf War unfold through the eyes of Turkish television, where she was living at the time. Discussion included themes such as: Why should we share experiences? Tolerance, openness and understanding were some of the responses. How many of you feel comfortable about talking about these experiences? Why? Why not?
  • Similarities between Islam & Christianity: The class discussed and defined monotheism as something common to both religions and to Judaism. Then they thought of other similarities between the three such as the Ten Commandments. Does it surprise you, the teacher asked, that these religions have values in common? And yet what about the Middle East situation?

The Languages and Multicultural Education Resources Centre (LMERC) have a number of videos which look at the educational experiences of CALD students including those of Arabic students. For example Our Boys (2003) is a series about CALD boys from Canterbury Boys High School in Sydney. One program focuses on Roni, a refugee from Iraq and another on Mohamed, a Lebanese Muslim. See the LMERC catalogue for details: http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/lem/lmerc/lib_online_cat.htm
http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/lem/lmerc/about.htm

Delta College in the USA offers a range of multicultural maths lessons including this lesson 'Islamic Inheritance Mathematics' which describes how a woman's estate is divided among her beneficiaries according to Islamic law:

http://www.deltacollege.edu/dept/basicmath/Islamic.htm

The Racism. No Way website offers a Cultural Diversity Mini Webquest that allows students to research Australia's development as a multicultural nation.  Use this link http://www.racismnoway.com.au and then gain the direct link to the lesson plan by searching using 20040505.

Other lesson plans you can access through the site are:

  • Harvest of Endurance for English, Technology or Arts where students explore the history of the Chinese in Australia and some of the significant events which have contributed to shaping Australia as a nation.  Search using 20010228.
  • Migrants and Immigration Jigsaw for Humanities and Technology where students examine facts relating to immigration and explore how racism, prejudice and discrimination can result from ignorance. Search for the link to this lesson plan using 20001219.
  • Australian Settlers for Mathematics, Humanities and Technology were students interpret graphs and research events to identify links between events in the world and the arrival and plight of immigrant groups.  Use 20001012 to reach the direct link to this lesson plan.
  • Marking Time for Mathematics, Technology and Humanities.  In this lesson plan students examine the influence of interaction with other cultures and the environment in relation to calendars.  Search using 20001012.

Revisit the Australian government's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity website http://www.hreoc.gov.au/info_for_teachers/index.html.   Here you will find a structured online human rights education program which includes education modules, flexible resources sheets, free classroom resources that can be order and so on.  The education modules include Face the Facts, a teaching strategy that includes sections on refugees and asylum seekers, migrants and multiculturalism and indigenous peoples.  All lessons include curriculum links for all Australian states.

The Department of Education, Science and Training's Asia Education Foundation also have a wide range of professional development and curriculum resources.   While these are focused on Asia, they also engage with the question of working interculturally and with tackling belief in the classroom.  Go to http://www.asiaeducation.edu.au/index_flash.htm and use the left hand menu to select either professional development or curriculum resources.

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