This paper presents data from an Australian high school classroom, investigating how students and their teacher negotiate readings of literature in order to arrive at meanings that are valued by subject English, as well as understood by the students. Subject English acts a vital agent for the transmission of both literacy and literary knowledge in…

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning…

The advances of modern biotechnology provide teachers with a number of opportunities to explore socioscientific issues, and in doing so to enhance students' reasoning skills. Although some attempt has been made to understand cultural differences in students' informal reasoning across international and regional boundaries, there is limited research…

School mathematics tends to have developed from the major cultures of Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe. However, indigenous cultures in particular may have distinctly different systematic ways of referring to space and thinking mathematically about spatial activity. Their approaches are based on the close link between the environment and…

As the result of an increasingly technologically "connected" world, citizens are finding it difficult to effectively exercise civic responsibilities in relation to global issues such as climate change, poverty, and warfare (Tully, 2009). New understandings of the concept of "citizenship" are being extended beyond traditional…

Recent rapid changes in the ethnic and cultural make-up of school communities have highlighted the need for teacher education to prepare teachers for culturally diverse contexts. International study trips provide direct experience and interaction with culturally diverse "others" as a way to extend pre-service teachers' understandings of…

Aboriginal children learn a two-way pedagogy and most Aboriginal learners have to engage in bicultural and bilingual education to succeed in the dominant educational setting. Aboriginal Australians pride themselves on being Aboriginal, however Aboriginal epistemology and ontology are never considered as true methodologies within a dominant…

For a while now I have been researching and writing about Australian Indigenous education issues. Like you all, I have seen much good work and learnt much from what is going on across the country and internationally to improve outcomes for Indigenous learners in formal education processes. And still we go on with the struggle and with the…

Lists some of the citations in the ERIC database dealing with teaching global studies in elementary school. Includes teaching methods, works on individual countries, curriculum suggestions, and student activities. Suggests that students need a foundation for a consciousness and acceptance of multicultural realities. (DK)

This bibliography lists 1,038 multicultural books for children and teenagers, published between 1970 and 1991, that can assist librarians, teachers, and parents in educating children and young adults about their changing world. The books are selected to enhance opportunities for children to live and learn together by providing them with fair and…

With Indigenous knowledges being increasingly available via different media, there is the risk of these knowledges becoming disengaged from the peoples who imparted them. A consequence of this disengagement is that it creates the conditions for the creation and perpetuation of misunderstanding and misuse of Indigenous peoples' lifeworlds. This…