CONSTRUCTING CULTURALLY INCLUSIVE PEDAGOGY: QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY

Karen Dooley, Paul Herschell, Parlo Singh

Griffith University

Introduction

In this paper we report on the preliminary findings of a three-year

project titled, Constructing 'Australian Identities' through language

and literacy education in schools, communities and workplaces

(Australian Identities Project). The project is being conducted in

seven ethnically diverse state secondary schools with substantial

cohorts of recently arrived migrant students, namely Samoans or

Taiwanese. In general terms, the purpose of the project is to

investigate the construction of identity at the school and classroom

level in the context of new market pressure on state schools. In

particular, the project investigates the appropriation of aspects of

Samoan or Taiwanese culture into the identities constructed in schools

in this context. The investigation is focused on the implications that

the construction of these identities have for the distribution of

knowledge to particular groups in a school's student population, the

creation of the subjects taught in the school, and the evaluation of

the knowledge acquired by the school's students (Bernstein, 1996).

With the rapid expansion of the private school sector at the current

time, and the greater willingness of families to bypass the local

school for more attractive schools further afield, many Queensland

state schools cannot take for granted the enrolment of students from

the local area to the extent that this was once possible. As a

consequence, these schools are now under pressure to market themselves

even in the local area from which they have traditionally drawn their

students. The following comments by a deputy principal at one of the

schools participating in the Australian Identities Project illustrate

these new market pressures:

... we draw a lot from ... the schools considered not to be as good ...

It's the perception of that, the perception of there's less trouble

here and it's easier to learn, less disruption in the classes so better

kids will want to come here, but we lose a lot of cream off the top to

all the private schools ... we were talking, discussing yesterday that

we really need to get up and market ourselves. In Toowoomba ... it's

very competitive up there. They've actually gone on TV and the state

schools are marketing themselves up there.

The construction of a locally marketable identity is one strategy by

which state schools are responding to increasing competition in the

educational services sector. The process of constructing a market

identity involves projection onto consumables which relay to the school

community itself, and to potential members of that community, a sense

of 'who' the school is, what it does, and how it is developing

(Bernstein, 1996). In ethnically diverse schools such as those

participating in the Australian Identities Project, ethnic culture is

one of the consumables available for this process of identity

construction. Briefly, more than two decades of multicultural

'celebration' of cultural diversity have created desire for the

gorgeous costumes, the interesting food and the traditional dances of

ethnic minority groups: "what attracts ... is surely the reality of

multicultural consumption, that is, the transnational commodification

of cultural texts and artefacts" (Milner, 1993:135). Moreover,

ethnically targetted funding has helped create communities as

recipients of services such as education (Vasta, 1993). Consequently,

the cultures of a school's locale provide a valuable source of

consumables onto which the school can project itself to construct a

locally marketable identity in conditions of increasing competition.

To re-iterate, the Australian Identities Project is an investigation of

the construction of identities marketable in the ethnically diverse

localities of seven state schools. The project is focused on the 'who'

of these identities; for example, the construction of schools as

'multicultural'. It is focused on the 'what' of these identities; for

example, the construction of a school as a place in which culture is

celebrated and culturally specific educational needs are met. Finally,

the project focuses on the progression implicit in a school's identity;

for example, the sense of a school's responsiveness to the changing

demography of the local area -- in this case responsiveness to the

arrival of large cohorts of Samoan or Taiwanese students.

A key concern of the Australian Identities Project is to document the

implications that the incorporation of aspects of local culture into a

school's identity have for the distribution of knowledge to particular

groups in a school's student population, the creation of the subjects

taught in the school, and the evaluation of the knowledge acquired by

the school's students (Bernstein, 1996). Clearly then, the Australian

Identities Project is not a liberal multicultural or postmodern

celebration of diverse or multiple identities. Rather, the project was

designed to document the social justice implications of the usage that

schools make of culture when constructing an identity marketable to

local communities.

Furthermore, the Australian Identities Project does not attempt to

provide an authentic account of the experience of growing up Samoan or

Taiwanese in Australian schools: the project is not designed to produce

the diasporic sequel to Margaret Mead's (1961), Coming of Age in Samoa:

A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. The

history of neo-colonial knowledge production about non-Western students

as deficit others in Western schools (Bhabha, 1994; Singh, 1994)

renders the speech for and about others that would be involved in such

a project politically untenable (Alcoff, 1991-92). Indeed, the Samoan

and Chinese community consultants to the Australian Identities Project

have been explicitly concerned that the project focus on the way that

the schools attended by Samoan and Chinese students appropriate the

culture of these students, and the implications of such, rather than on

cultural problems experienced by the students themselves.

The urgency of such a focus on the use of culture by schools, rather

than on the cultural backgrounds of students in schools, has become

apparent with the outbreak of racial discord occassioned by the 1996

Federal election. As the Australian Identities project has proceeded

during these years, notions of irreconcilable cultural difference

between white Australia and its others have been invoked in public

forums as justification for immigration restriction and other

discriminatory measures. This follows two decades during which notions

of cultural difference were used to justify targetted funding for

ethnic communities. The timeliness of the Australian Identities

project, with its focus on the social justice implications of the

appropriation of local culture by schools, inheres in the high profile

of this complex and controversial discourse on cultural difference and

entitlement. Important questions arise: How are understandings of

culture appropriated to schools' market-oriented identities implicated

in the distribution of knowledge to particular groups in student

populations? How are they implicated in the creation of school

subjects? How are they implicated in the evaluation of student

knowledge? These are among the questions at the centre of the

Australian Identities Project reported in this paper.

In what follows, an overview of the Australian Identities Project is

provided. Preliminary findings of the project are then presented by

illustrative analyses of the construction of identity in data collected

at one of the participating schools, specifically, a school with a

substantial Samoan population.

The Australian Identities Project: An Overview

Six of the seven schools participating in the Australian Identities

Project are regular schools and one is an intensive language school for

newly arrived migrants. Of the six regular schools, five are in lower

socio-economic areas. The remaining school is in a middle class

suburb, but draws students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

All seven schools participated in data collection in 1996 and early

1997, providing both interview and classroom data. To elaborate,

interviews were conducted with: school personnel, including teachers,

administrators and support staff; Chinese and Samoan students and

parents; and other members of the Chinese and Samoan communities with

an interest in schooling, particularly in the schools participating in

the study. The classroom data collected in 1996 was drawn mostly from

lessons in English and Social Science.

Some of the methodological conclusions drawn from preliminary analysis

of the data collected for the Australian Identities Project in 1996 and

early 1997 were that: i) the project's focus on identity construction

in schools could be sharpened by observing a series of lessons in a

particular class; and ii) that interviews should focus on these

lessons. In response to these conclusions, case studies were

undertaken at two of the participating schools in mid-to-late 1997.

These case studies involved intensive data collection in several

English and Social Science classes in each school. The purpose was to

document the everyday practices in which students and teachers were

engaged in the course of a unit of work.

The case studies were undertaken at two outer-suburban secondary

schools. One of these schools -- Daybreak High School -- is in a

middle-class suburb, but draws students from a wide range of

socio-economic backgrounds. The school is diverse culturally too.

While the largest proportion of the students are white Australian and

native English speaking, the school also has a large group of recently

migrated students from Taiwan, Southern China, Vietnam and Bosnia. By

contrast, the other school in the case study -- Sanunder High School --

is is in an area that is designated as disadvantaged. This school

mainly draws students of low socio-economic backgrounds. While there

is a substantial population of white, native English speaking students

at Sanunder, the school also has significant groups of Indigenous and

Vietnamese students, and recently arrived Pacific Islanders.

In each of the case study classes at Daybreak and Sanunder, the teacher

was interviewed before or after every lesson and asked about the

specific learning activities, objectives and expected outcomes. A

small group of students was interviewed after each lesson and asked to

explain what the lesson was about and to reflect on what they learned

and how they participated in the activities. After the lesson data and

the lesson-focused interview data was collected, a semi-structured

interview was also conducted with the teachers and students. This

interview entailed more general questions about curriculum, pedagogy

and evaluation at the school and community perceptions of the school.

In addition, researchers recorded detailed field notes to assist in the

transcription and interpretation of each lesson; examined school policy

documents; collected examples of the students' work, activity sheets

and assessment tasks; and collected media reports about the schools.

The result is a large corpus of lesson, interview and ethnographic data

from the two schools. A break down of the lesson and interview data

collected is as follows:

Sanunder

Year 10 English

White Female Teacher

1 Tongan Female

1 Samoan Female

1 Samoan Male

Year 10 English

White Male Teacher

2 Samoan Females

Year 10 Social Studies

White Female

2 Samoan Males

Daybreak

Year 12 English

White Female Teacher

2 Taiwanese males

1 Taiwanese female

1 Hong Kong female

Year 9 English

White Female Teacher

2 Taiwanese females

Year 10 Geography

White Female Teacher

2 Taiwanese females

Year 10 Geography

White Female Teacher

1 Chinese male

Data Collected

Sanunder

Lesson focused teacher interview 12

Lesson focused student interview 12

Semi-structured teacher interview 3

Semi-structured student interview 3

Taped lesson 12

Daybreak

Lesson focused teacher interview 24

Lesson focused student interview 23

Semi-structured teacher interview 6

Semi-structured student interview 7

Taped lesson 26

The aim of this phase of the data collection was to focus on

'taken-for-granted' aspects of the creation of the English and Social

Science subjects in the school, and the evaluation of these in

practice. In particular, the focus was on the incorporation of

taken-for-granted notions of culture into the creation of subjects and

the conduct of evaluation in the schools. As will be recalled, the

Australian Identities Project has the broad aim of documenting the

implications that the uptake of notions of culture in the market

identity of schools have for the distribution of knowledge to groups of

students, the creation of subjects and the evaluation of students'

learning. Ongoing observation of both schools through interviews,

analysis of school market documents and public addresses by school

personnel, indicate that both schools market themselves as

'multicultural', meaning that students of all cultures have the chance

of success and that all can learn tolerance through day-to-day contact

with members of other cultures. The case study data was collected for

the purpose of analysing how the understandings of culture incorporated

into such school identities -- or excluded from them -- were worked

into curriculm and pedagogy, and into talk about such.

In the following section we will examine selected excerpts of data to

illustrate some of the findings of the Australian Identities Project

emerging from preliminary analyses. The data was collected in both

1996 and 1997 and relates to Sanunder -- the low socio-economic case

study school with the substantial population of Samoan and other

Pacific Islander students. We focus on the way that members of the

Sanunder school community reproduce, contest, challenge and

re-articulate competing discourses on culture. We look firstly at data

related to pedagogy in the classroom and then at data relating to

pedagogy outside the classroom and indeed, outside the school.

Culture in the Classroom

Sanunder High School has a negative media image that is not

incorporated into the positive multicultural identity by which the

school markets itself locally. This is an image of below-average

academic attainment and serious social problems, including violence and

drugs. A disproportionate number of the Samoan students at Sanunder

High School are amongst the low achievers of the school and are

considered to have behavioural problems. One response to these

problems of achievement and behaviour has been the employment of a

Samoan aide. This aide is expected to work in a liaison role,

informing teachers about Samoan culture and informing Samoan students

and parents about what is expected of them in the culture of the

school. Additionally, the aide is expected to play an instrumental

role in the displays of Samoan culture required by the multicultural

identity by which the school markets itself to the local community.

Moreover, the aide is expected to help teachers incorporate aspects of

Samoan culture into the academic program of the school. All these

aspects of the Samoan aide's role can be understood in terms of the

'what' of the market identity of a 'multicultural school' -- this

school celebrates cultural diversity and attends to culturally specific

educational needs.

The assumption at work in the liaison role of the Samoan aide is that

there are significant cultural differences between the Samoan community

and the Australian school. To put these differences in the negative

terms in which they are usually couched in the data collected for the

Australian Identities Project, Samoan students are seen to be

disadvantaged variously by: an oral culture inadequate to the literacy

demands of a Western school; a laid-back Island culture that does not

foster the academic drive necessary for success in Western education;

traditional attitudes to women inimical to successful learning with

female teachers in contemporary Australia; and violent behavioural

norms contrary to those of Australian society in general, and

Australian schools in particular. There is variance in the particular

assumption or assumptions invoked in talk about identity at any one

time, or enacted at any one time. However, what is crucial is that the

boundaries between the categories 'Samoan' and 'Australian' or

'Western' are sharply delineated. In other words, while the content of

the categories varies from orality/literacy to motivation to gender

attitudes to norms of violence, the fact remains that the categories

Samoan and Australian are sharply different in the schools

participating in the Australian Identities Project. As a consequence,

the identities of these categories are sharply differentiated also

(Bernstein, 1996).

Like the positive assumptions of exotic cultural difference

underpinning the displays of Samoan culture promoted by Sanunder High

School, the negative assumptions about the cultural differences

confronting Samoan students in Western education or Australian schools,

can be usefully viewed as segments of what Bernstein (1996) terms a

'horizontal discourse'. Such a discourse consists of taken-for-granted

knowledge: it is everyday or commonsense knowledge. This form of

knowledge is typically local and context-dependent. Such knowledge can

be contrasted with what Bernstein (1996) terms 'vertical knowledges' --

the coherent, hierarchically organised structures of the sciences or

the specialised languages of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

One of the findings of the Australian Identities project is that Samoan

students at Sanunder High School and adult Samoan community members

with an interest in the school reproduce and challenge the horizontal

discourse on Samoan cultural difference in complex ways. In the

remainder of this section we will briefly examine a single excerpt of

data taken from an interview with an adult member of the Samoan

community: The purpose is to illustrate some of the ways that the

discourse on Samoan cultural difference is reproduced and challenged.

There's too much emphasis on the dancing, the eating, the cultural food

and things like that and not enough emphasis on academic work. None of

those teacher aides know anything about the academic performance of the

students. They would only do something if a teacher asked them to do

something, but they don't have the skills or the ability to, to look at

the whole situation and say this child is avoiding schoolwork, for

example, by making excuses and saying it's all cultural, but not able

to deal with, with the whole picture.

As will be recalled, Sanunder High School markets itself as a

multicultural school. Hence, the inclusion of aspects of Samoan

culture in Humanities and Social Science lessons and units taught at

the school, and the displays of Samoan dancing at school events. In

the theoretical terms introduced above, the inclusion of aspects of

Samoan culture in the pedagogy of Sanunder High School can be viewed as

an appropriation of the commonsense knowledge about Samoan cultural

difference to the school's academic prorgram. To re-state, it can be

viewed as an appropriation of the horizontal discourse within which the

school constructs its market identity to the vertical discourse of the

school's academic program. To use a term drawn from Bernstein's (1996)

sociology of pedagogy, the horizontal discourse within which the school

constructs its market identity has been 'recontextualised' to the

vertical discourse of the school's academic program.

One of the findings of the Australian Identities Project is that the

recontextualisation of commonsense knowledge about Samoan cultural

difference from the horizontal discourse within which the school's

multicultural identity is constructed to the vertical discourses of the

school's academic program is strongly contested by some of the adult

members of the Samoan community. A common criticism is that emphasis

on celebrating Samoan culture in the study of English and Social

Science at the school denies students access to the socially valued

skills and knowledge Samoan students need for success in Australian

society beyond the shcool.

A related criticism concerns the fact that Samoan students are taken

away from regular classes to prepare the displays of dancing that have

become a feature of school events. In other words, Samoan community

adults (and some teachers) are arguing that students are expected to

contribute to the construction of the school's identity at the expense

of their academic work. The question arises: What is the academic cost

to Samoan students of being viewed as a resource for the construction

of the school's multicultural identity?

The other, and related issue that arises in the excerpt of data

analysed in this section is the lack of attention to the actual

academic problems of Samoan students. As will be recalled from that

data, the interviewee argues that Samoan aides employed by Sanunder and

other high schools cannot attend to the academic problems of the Samoan

students. This criticism should not be understood as a personal attack

on the aide. Rather, it is a criticism of the discursive context

within the school in which she operates -- a context in which she is

expected to speak the commonsense knowledge of cultural difference

between the Samoan community and Australian schools or Western

education. Hence, the fact, noted by the Samoan adult, that such aides

do not challenge students who reproduce that same commonsense knowledge

to excuse their own avoidance of schoolwork.

To re-iterate, preliminary findings of the Australian Identities

Project indicate that the horizontal discourse on Australian/Western

and Samoan cultural difference in which Sanunder High School constructs

an identity marketable to the local community is complexly reproduced

and contested by Samoans. In catering for the specific educational

needs of Samoan students, the school has established a discursive

context in which it is likely that the Samoan aide and students will

reproduce this discourse. However, some adult members of the Samoan

community contest the discourse on cultural difference in various ways.

For example, they question the recontextualisation of this discourse

to the vertical discourses of the school's academic program, question

the academic time lost by students expected to contribute displays of

Samoan culture to school events, and question the deflection of

attention from the actual academic problems of the students to their

culture.

Culture Outside the Classroom and Outside the School: Under Surveillance

It will be recalled from the preceding section that questions have

emerged in the Australian Identities Project about students'

reproduction of the horizontal discourse on cultural difference between

the Samoan community and the Australian school within which Sanunder

High School constructs a locally marketable identity. In the data

analysed in that section an interested adult member of the Samoan

community criticised the fact that the discursive context of the

schools participating in the project does not encourage Samoan aides to

challenge the cultural explanations that students construct for their

academic failure.

By contrast, in this section we analyse the reproduction of the

discourse on Samoan/Australian cultural difference salient at Sanunder

High School in data drawn from an interview with Samoan students

themselves. This data illustrates a further finding of the Australian

Identities Project, namely that students must negotiate not only the

identity of their school that is produced by the school as it markets

itself to the local community, but also the identities constructed for

the school by the local community. This requires the students to

engage with negative media representations of the school.

In constructing its multicultural market identity, Sanunder High School

draws on positive media representations of the school. These include

images of the contribution that Samoans with their rich cultural

heritage make to the ethnic diversity of the school. In these

representations Samoans are typified as the heirs to an oral tradition

of stories and music that they share joyously with the school

community. Hence, photographs of Samoan dancers and singers are

prominent in the montage of media clippings about Sanunder High School

that greets visitors to the school's foyer. This display makes

available to Samoan students a positive identity: the Samoan student as

contributor of cultural richness valued by the school.

However, as indicated earlier in this paper, there is also a negative

media image of Samoan students -- an image of huge males given to

violence and lawlessness. In this version of Samoan culture Samoan

teenagers are typically constructed as armed, drug-using gang members

looking for trouble. By way of example, consider the following excerpt

from a recent feature article in the State press:

The cowards of the 90s

... Typically they hunted in a pack and ran away after knocking the

slim lad to the ground where one jumped on his stomach as he lay

unconscious and bleeding

Police confirm that Brisbane's Samoan community is one of the city's

most religious and law abiding sections. However, some of their

teenagers don't exhibit the same fine qualities. Because they are

bigger and stronger than youths of a similar age, they can create havoc

in junior football. But of more concern is their penchant for violence

and criminal conduct of the sporting field -- displaying a "once were

warriors" attitude.

(The Courier Mail p.23. 23/8/97)

The problem of constructing a Samoan cultural identity in the context

of the high profile negative media representation of Samoan students at

Sanunder High School was raised repeatedly by the Samoan students who

participated in post-lesson interviews conducted at the school -- both

in their accounts of classroom interactions and their accounts of

interactions outside the classroom. The task facing these students was

not one of simply negotiating the identity constructed by Sanunder High

School through its selective use of positive media representations, but

one of engaging also with the identity constructed for the school by

the local community in response to negative media representations of

Samoan and other Pacific Islander students at the school. The

following excerpt drawn from an interview with two Pacific Islander

students is illustrative:

Researcher: Maybe you can tell me a little bit more about what the

people in Sanunder think of the school

Michelle: Like they think its a bad influence on their kids cause like

the Polynese. What they read in the paper about the the Polynese, in

the newspaper, and like some of them were planning to bring their kids

here but when they heard about that they didn't want any, they took

their kids to another school.

Lauren: They're making it worse with the cameras now. Cause are there

the kids don't want to come here.

Researcher: Yeah

Michelle: Cause like they'll feel like they're in prison as well

Michelle: They [the community] think we're mean, sort of thing

Researcher: What about your parents. Do they think it's a good school.

Lauren: Yeah, but, you know we don't hardly listen, cause everyone says

this and that, but they say it's not the school but the people who go

to the school

...

Researcher: You were telling me last week that the school is not nearly

as bad as lots of people in the community think

Michelle: Um yeah, we should make a complaint more um... the admin

should make a complaint to the newspaper that um... the community

should have no fear of our school because you know ( ) they think its

pretty bad but they don't really know what's happening in the place

This excerpt makes plain the students' awareness that the local

community has constructed a negative identity for their school from

negative media representations of the Polynesian students of the

school. Further, the students consider that the school has exacerbated

this negative identity by installing surveillance cameras: They're

making it worse with the cameras now. Of relevance to this paper is

the nature of the challenge that the students make to this negative

identity of their school.

Briefly, the students argue that the media images of the school are

wrong: they don't really know what's happening in the place. Hence,

the negative identity constructed for the school by the local community

(with the assistance of the security-conscious school) is wrong: the

community should have no fear of our school. Interestingly, the

students reproduce the horizontal discourse on the cultural difference

between the Samoan community and the Australian school. They challenge

the content of the categories in this discourse, that is, that

Polynesians are a bad influence on other students and that Polynesians

are mean. However, they do not challenge the sharpness with which the

category 'Polynesian' is delineated from other categories of students

at Sanunder High School.

Moreover, as Sanunder High School markets itself as 'multicultural'

through positive images of Samoan students enriching the school through

their culture, so too would the students market the school through

positive images of Polynesians. Michelle and Lauren want inaccurate

media representations of their school corrected so that potential

students are not scared off. They think that the school administration

should make a complaint to the newspaper.

In summary, this paper has presented some preliminary findings from the

Australian Identities Project which is investigating the appropriation

of aspects of Samoan and Taiwanese culture into the identities

constructed in state schools in the context of increasing market

pressure on these schools. The paper has indicated the ways that the

school, and some members of the Samoan community produce and reproduce

a discourse on sharp cultural differences between the Samoan community

and the Australian school. The paper has also indicated challenges to

this discourse offered by some members of the Samoan community --

challenges concerned with the academic implications of the primacy of

notions of cultural difference at Sanunder High School. Further

analyses of the complexity of these engagements with the discourse on

difference will be undertaken. For now, we end with a statement by an

adult member of the Samoan community, a statement which raises the key

finding of the Australian Identities Project to date:

They can be Samoan and also be well educated and have the best of all

that. Why should we have to just hold on to our culture and not aah,

aspire to, anything greater in this environment?

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Dooley, Herschell & Singh AARE 1997