Rethinking Encounter: intercultural interactions between parents in Australia’s culturally diverse primary schools

ABSTRACT

This paper critically engages with the idea that everyday spaces of association can be seen as key sites in the development of intercultural understanding for diverse individuals. Drawing on research undertaken in two culturally diverse primary schools in metropolitan Melbourne, it explores the primary school as a key site for intercultural encounters between parents in Australia’s culturally diverse suburbs. This paper identifies a number of barriers limiting productive intercultural encounters between parents within the primary school setting. Specifically, it shows that such encounters are limited by national narratives of diversity, the complex demands of urban life, and the social and emotional benefits of avoiding uncertain interactions with difference. The paper builds on understandings of encounter as a contingent achievement and underscores the complexity of the ‘everyday’ as a space of political possibility.

KEY WORDS:

• Encounter
• multiculturalism
• everyday multiculturalism
• intercultural understanding
• Australia
• primary schools

Acknowledgements

This project was undertaken for the completion of an Honours degree. I would like to thank Dr Nicole Cook for her supervision and encouragement throughout this project and for her feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks are also due to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their time and helpful comments on this paper, and to the staff and parents from participating schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The suburbs in which the participating schools are located will be referred to as Suburb A and Suburb B.

2. With knowledge that cultural background is a complex and contested term within academic and social discourse—and recognition of the complex ways in which cultural, ethnic, and racial identity are formed and change—this research asked participants simply to identify their own cultural background. This allowed participants to express their cultural identity separately from nation of birth, country of residence, religion, or languages spoken. Throughout this paper, participants’ self-defined cultural background is indicated by ^a, and country of birth is indicated by ^b.

3. Within this paper, data from the questionnaire will be represented by both statistical figures and numeric total as a fraction of total responses for that question, e.g. 50 per cent (10/20). This gives a true representation of results given that not all questions were answered by all participants.