Abstracts - Earli

Schools with a plurilingual/multicultural membership. Taking sociocultural, postcolonial andpragmatist theoretical frameworks as points of departure and taking research conducted withindifferent fields such as communication-culture-identities and ethnicity research, language relatededucational research and the academic areas known as Disability Studies and Deaf Studies, theproject aims to create new empirical, analytical and theoretical intersections. It is hoped that theresults will contribute towards more refined knowledge about the similarities, differences andcomplexities of linguistic and culturally pluralistic language education in different secondaryschool learning environments. Two pilot studies in project partner schools will be conducted in thespring. The results of these will hopefully provide crucial orientation for fine-tuning the project’sanalytical framework and approach. These preliminary findings will be shared and discussed inthis poster presentation.Contested multicultural identities in post 9/11 Australia. Challenges and opportunities for theeducation sectorNina Burridge, University of Technology, Sydney, AustraliaThis paper investigates the challenges and opportunities teachers and educators face working withethno-cultural diverse communities in the increasingly complex post 9/11 environment inAustralia schools. In providing an historical back drop to the findings, the paper posits that despitethe fact that Australian leaders boast one of the most successful experiments in multiculturalismpost world war two, current concerns about ethno-cultural diversity have deep roots in the nations’race-relations history. It is clear that Australians views of multiculturalism are complex and multilayered.The paper reports on case study research conducted in five secondary schools in thegreater metropolitan area of Sydney, Australia. The schools are located in different geographicareas with different ethno-cultural compositions. The paper will analyse student and teacherunderstandings of ethno-cultural diversity issues and their manifestations in the classroom andwithin the schools’ neighbourhood and discuss the challenges and opportunities for teachers andteacher educators in dealing with the increasingly complex environments in which schools operate.The findings affirm that the challenges for teachers and teacher educators are to steer a balancedcourse between competing policy agendas so that students from ethnically and socio-economicallydiverse backgrounds are not further disadvantaged in a ‘one size fits all’ education system. This isa particular challenge when the research suggests that teachers often inhabit a socio-cultural worldwhich has more in common with monoculturalism than the culturally diverse world of the studentsthey teach. The challenges then become ones of providing the resources and professional trainingfor all our teachers, including our teacher education students, to better understand the pedagogicalissues surrounding the links between culture, cultural maintenance and improved educationaloutcomes for students from ethno-cultural diverse backgrounds.Teachers and parents in a multicultural environment: do they have the same representations ofeducation and pupils?Gregory Voz, University of Luxembourg, LuxembourgBased on ongoing action-research in a multicultural school context in the French Community ofBelgium, the present study aims to look at differences and similarities of representations held bynative and immigrant groups of people. We will investigate whether the representations held bythe different school actors are similar enough to build a consensus for an action for betterschooling. To prepare the intervention on school-family communication, we will respond to tworesearch questions: 1. Which variables explain the similarities or the differences in representationsheld by the groups: status (teacher/parent), nationality, age, schooling history, or other factors? 2.– 656 –