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Abstract
This article reports on the first comprehensive survey of public school teachers in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) around issues of multicultural and English as Second Language (ESL) education. While there is substantial literature on multicultural education – what it should and shouldn’t be – there is much that is left unexplored in research in the area, not least of which is the characteristics of the teaching labour force. In this article, we ‘take stock’ of multicultural education, not by engaging with philosophical debates about multiculturalism as an ethical or policy practice, but as an auditing of what exists in the name of multicultural education. Drawing on a sample of over 5000 respondents, the article documents the changing cultural profile of the profession and highlights gaps in pre-service training and professional learning of teachers in terms of meeting the needs of Australia’s increasingly culturally and linguistically complex school populations.
Acknowledgements
The research upon which this article is based was funded by the Australian Research Council the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities and the New South Wales Institute of Teachers. The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of each body.
Notes
1. The term ESL (English as a second language) is used in this article rather than EAL (English as an additional language). While the latter is perhaps more accurate, ESL was the term used in the survey and is the term with greater currency in NSW schools at this point in time.
2. The Melbourne Declaration set the direction for schooling in Australia for 10 years from its release in 2008. The goals were developed by Education Ministers from Federal, State and Territory levels of government in Australia.
3. During the course of the project, the New South Wales Institute of Teachers (NSWIT) was joined with the New South Wales Board of Studies (NSWBoS) to become the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES). In this article NSWIT is used instead of the more recent BOSTES.
4. In Australia, education is delivered at a state and territory level. NSW’s education system is the second largest state system in the world, as most other education systems around the world are delivered at a district/regional level.
5. All data and findings from the survey can be found within the project’s survey report located at: www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/542212/RMRME_Report_1.pdf. The survey form is an appendix item of the report.
6. Due to variations in how respondents reported their language background, Chinese languages, primarily Mandarin and Cantonese, were grouped together.
7. This discussion is taken up in two other RMRME project reports that draw upon focus group data and the evaluation of teacher-led action research in 14 project schools (see http://www.multiculturaleducation.edu.au/).
8. All state and territories have agreed to adopt the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In NSW these standards have been progressively implemented since 2013.
9. The Australian National Curriculum was introduced to ensure a consistency in education across all states and territories in Australia. Further information can be found through ACARA (Citation2013) at: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au.
10. The NSW DEC defines first phase ESL learners as ‘students whose understanding and production of spoken or written English is obviously limited in all social and educational situations. First phase students range from complete beginners with minimal or no English to students who can communicate in English with limited fluency about events, themes and topics related to their personal experiences’ (NSW DET Citation2004, 6).
11. The NSWIT has a second standard for graduate teachers related to LBOTE students, namely that they ‘Demonstrate knowledge, respect and understanding of the social, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds of students and how these factors may affect learning’ (NSWIT Citation2005, 4). This standard, however, has more relevance to multicultural education more broadly rather than teaching ESL.
12. Implementation of the NSW DEC Multicultural Education Policy, previously known as the Cultural Diversity and Community Relations Policy: Multicultural Education in Schools Policy, commenced in December, 2005.