Towards a praxis of difference: Reimagining intercultural understanding in Australian schools as a challenge of practice

ABSTRACT

Intercultural education in Australia has been positioned in State-based official curriculum and education policy as developing understanding between diverse cultural groups. However, cultivating such understanding far more complex in practice than policy and curriculum directives can capture. In Australia, eruptions of intercultural tensions has an ongoing and complex history. This paper examines the challenges for teachers’ intercultural practice in one Australian public school setting. Reporting on a single-site ethnography drawing on Lefebvre’s production of space. I conceptualise teachers’ intercultural work as a praxis of difference, this paper problematises the way intercultural education is often taken up in tokenistic ways and advocates for reimagining intercultural education as a challenge of practice. I argue that an examination of the conditions that produce complex relations between diverse cultural groups in particular spaces is a productive starting point for developing intercultural understanding as a rational praxis of difference .

KEYWORDS:

• Australian curriculum
• difficult knowledge
• intercultural understanding
• praxis of difference

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Babak Davand for his support and critical feedback in reviewing this article, and the Australian Association for Research in Education sociology special interest group for the funded opportunity to have my article professionally proofread prior to submission. I would also like to thank Scott Bulfin for his ongoing support and engagement with my work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).