A reconceptualisation of ‘knowing Asia’ in Australian education

Abstract

Since 1969, over 60 Australian government and non-government policies, documents, committees, working parties and organisations have explored the need to ‘know Asia’. In schools, this engagement is conceptualised as ‘Asia literacy’ and disseminated in the emerging Australian Curriculum through the cross-curriculum priority ‘Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia’. However, ‘Asia literacy’ often struggles for purchase in Australian education. I argue that finding traction requires disruption of the dominant discourse of ‘Asia’ as a unitary construct and questioning what constitutes ‘Asia’. This article explores how discourse can be reconceptualised to open up space for schools to engage with ‘knowing Asia’.

Keywords:

• Asia literacy
• discourse
• postcolonial
• Asian century
• politics of knowledge

Notes

1. Seeking a stable and universal notion of what is Asia (or the ‘West’ or ‘Australia’ for that matter) is greatly problematic. Hence, in the context of this article, Asia, as Broinowski (1992) suggests, ‘should always be read as if written between quotation marks’ (p. x).

2. The two context dimensions sit within a purposive case study of Ibis State High School (pseudonym; years: 8–12), one of the larger government secondary schools in Queensland, Australia (refer to Salter, 2013a, 2014).

3. Teachers interviewed taught a range of subjects at the school; they had teaching experience ranging from 4 to 24 years. All were classroom teachers and many held leadership positions including pastoral and curriculum responsibilities. Four teachers had travelled to Asia with travel experiences that ranged from visits to single countries to visits to up to five countries. One teacher identified as belonging to an Asian ethnic group.