Diversity: An Educational Advantage online teacher support

Welcome to the Diversity—An Educational Advantage Online Teacher Support Material (TSM). This website has been developed for use by teachers and is currently restricted to password access only. To request a password, please email your name, email, professional interest in this website and your institutional affiliation to citglob@deakin.edu.au.

This website aims to provide secondary school teachers with insights into the educational experiences of Arabic-background students, and how teachers are responding to some of their needs. Through critical reflection on the themes described in this website, teachers are encouraged to:

  • Explore various themes arising from school case studies in which students and teachers recount their experiences in dealing with issues of teaching and learning in culturally diverse settings
  • Make connections between key issues of cultural diversity and identity, curriculum frameworks, and their own unique teaching environments
  • Obtain useful resources for professional development
  • Obtain strategies developed by other teachers for use in their own classroom
  • Relate their own experiences to the experiences of teachers and students described in this website
  • Develop their own strategies for addressing educational challenges of cultural diversity in their school.

This web resource is based on a longitudinal study that originally focussed on the needs of Arab-Australian students in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs. Though the bulk of the student and parent interviews were undertaken with Arab-Australians – not an homogenous group by any means – these are taken and treated as case studies for understanding broader questions of inter-cultural relations in schools. A case study approach is, therefore, not aimed at singling out a specific target group for ‘preferential’ treatment, nor is it meant to reinforce divisive policies and discourses. On the contrary, it aims to nurture understanding, challenge stereotypes and builds schools’ capacity to manage student diversity, turning it into an educational advantage.

One of the major aims of this Project in its current phase is to expand the pool of testimonies and stories to other culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students, as well as English-speaking background students. In broadening the scope of this resource, the Project remains faithful to its fundamental conceptual approach which recognises education as a social enterprise, and strives to effect positive change at the level of learning attainment as well as inter-communal relationships and attitudes.

For an overview on how to use this TSM, click here. To learn more about this project click here.