Engaging with difference: Using the arts and the community to help children connect with others

Ruth Reynolds and Sue Lane

Abstract

In an attempt to develop tolerance and acceptance of other cultural groups, teacher educators from the University of Newcastle worked with members of the local African community to develop a creative arts programme for young school children. The process of engaging with the African cultures, the school teachers and students, and different aspects of the creative arts led us in directions, through an action research cycle, that we could not have anticipated. We moved from a position of teaching about others, with our own ideas of what would best build bridges between Australian and African communities, to teaching with others. As a result, we, and the students, began actually engaging with members of the region’s African community (from Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mali, Sudan and Rwanda).

Introduction

Educating new “citizens of the globe” by helping to provide them with an understanding of cultural, political, legal and economic structures in different parts of the world is a worthwhile activity for those school teachers who have the capacity to engage in such work (Demaine, 2004, p. 211). We live in a globalised world where technology beams particular views of what it is to be powerful, to be safe and to be acknowledged into a wide variety of homes, while in everyday interactions people are meeting and engaging with an increasing diversity of cultural groups. As Bourdieu explains (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), we all have our own unique ways of looking at the world (our cultural, social and economic capital), and our “habitus” (our dispositions, tendencies, propensities and inclinations, built up over years of enculturation). As a result, to interact with others who do not have a similar habitus or cultural capital will cause some degree of conflict, and the attempted domination of some groups over others across various spaces.

To ensure that we can all engage with each other in some sort of socially structured space or “field”, in a manner that allows collaboration and change for all groups, requires communication and reflexivity. This is a study of such a field, a field where all groups wanted to enhance intercultural understanding in a school classroom, and where the various groups struggled to assert their own dominance and validate their own habitus. This struggle has implications far beyond this classroom experience.

There is an increased impetus in schools to address issues of multicultural and intercultural education, with its associated links to antiracist education, human rights education and global education. Living with those who perhaps look and act differently from us has become a global necessity, and one that is not open to simple interpretations and solutions (Australian Council of Deans of Education, 2004). Schools are an obvious site for working to build bridges between culturally diverse communities, but although teachers in Australia are enthusiastic about teaching multicultural themes, their lack of understanding of ethnic groups different from their own, and the tendency to focus on the external attributes of cultural difference (such as food, dress and songs), means that teaching approaches do not necessarily address issues of participation and power in Australian society (Hill & Allan, 2004). There is an obvious need to address racism, human rights and global intercultural education within the school curriculum, but there is some confusion around how best to do this, both in Australia and in the wider world.

In the Australian context, engagement with Asia and Asian-based cultural groups has been at the forefront of curriculum initiatives in this area. Australia is located in the Asian region, and has the majority of its trading links with Asian countries, and so there is a great incentive to do so. However, in the mid-1990s many schools were arguing that by providing multicultural days or cultural food festivals they were doing all that could be expected (Council of Australian Governments, 1994), and this idea does not seem to have progressed since this time. The 2006 Asia Education Foundation’s National Statement for Engaging Young Australians with Asia in Australian Schools (2006) claimed that there was a need to promote an understanding of the value of cultural and linguistic diversity, and to contribute to and benefit from such diversity. One of the key outcomes would be to develop informed attitudes and values.

However, the key focus in most of these initiatives has been on improving knowledge. National government-sponsored research, by Griffin, Woods, Dulhunty and Coates (2002), surveying over 7,000 10-year-old and 14-year-old students’ knowledge and attitudes towards Asia, found that those who had made use of multiple forms of learning (often using the nationally sponsored Access Asia materials, see Curriculum Corporation, 1996), including formal structured classroom teaching, had a more accurate and deeper knowledge of Asia than those who had mainly been educated through informal activities, such as excursions or festivals. However, the distribution of attitudes was very different from that of knowledge and understanding, indicating that growth and development in attitudes are not necessarily related to exposure to an Asia-related curriculum or to learning.

This suggests that two levels of curriculum intervention are required: one at the level of attitudes and values, and one at the level of knowledge and awareness. The UNESCO report Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors, 1996) argues that the central pillar of education should be learning to live together, and one of the commissioners on this taskforce, Kornhauser, pointed out that this involves changing from tolerant coexistence into living together in active co-operation, thus replacing tolerance with respect (pp. 55–56). This involves both knowledge and attitudes, thus reinforcing the imperative to investigate curricular models that engage both. If we acknowledge that stereotypes and racist attitudes develop at a very young age, then they need to be addressed at a young age in our schools (Cameron, Alvarez, Ruble, & Fuligni, 2001; Harrington, 1998; Reynolds, 2004; Weigand, 1992).

The creative arts are a good medium for exploring attitudes, feelings and emotions. The UNESCO Statement on Arts Education and Multiculturalism points out that:

Arts education is at the heart of the construction of children. It models children’s sensitivity, intellect, relationship with themselves and with each other. Arts education takes part in developing tolerance, and helps children to apprehend the multicultural society where they evolve, and which they must integrate. (UNESCO, n.d.)

Eisner (2002) argues that the arts provide opportunities for other senses— auditory and tactile—to be brought to the representation of ideas and feelings. In other words, they offer alternative approaches to learning and knowing based on the use of different senses from what is usually valued in schools. The arts better engage the imagination than other modes of knowing and allow us to reconstruct social reality in a different way. Because of the diversity of approaches to the arts, the student is exposed to difference and can accept it more in an arts environment:

Art education exposes the individual to a wide variety of aesthetic tastes, providing the opportunity to broaden horizons, to develop an informed tolerance, and to respond constructively to the aesthetic decisions of others. (Allen, 1993, p. 9)

In addition Shaeffer and Englehardt (2006) support arts in education programmes as a tool to equip students with knowledge and skills of the community—an important aspect of this study.

The impetus for this project came as we university teacher educators combined research on the link between attitudes and global geographical knowledge with our beliefs about the value of teaching creative arts. The aim was to create a teaching programme that would allay fears about those who are different and counter stereotyping by addressing it before it has a chance to develop. We wanted to link:

•&;&;the teaching of the geography of Africa (Pickering, 2007, argues that unless students have a close personal relationship with particular countries they study, they tend to stereotype them)

•&;&;the emotional pull associated with the teaching of the creative arts (Black, 2000, argues that the use of art, music and language is needed to make connections to children’s everyday lives if they are to learn the geography of the world)

•&;&;the values and emotions that develop as part of a participatory project (Dadds, 2008, argues that the practitioner research process enables the growth of empathy and the enhancement of interpersonal understanding and compassion).

The aim of the project was to engage—which involves much more than knowing, awareness, knowing about or learning about. We wanted to counter views that see diversity as a deficit and something to be overcome (Cochran-Smith, 2004). We wanted to implement pedagogies that were socially just (Lingard, 2005). Having experience as partners in action learning, we wanted it to be participatory, but we also had our skills as teachers and as curriculum developers to bring to the table, and we wanted these to be taken into account.

So began the journey.

How the process became an action research cycle

The fundamental aim of action research is to improve practice rather than to produce knowledge. (Elliott, 1991, p. 49)

The act of improving practice often leads to an improvement in the product—even if accidentally—as well as in the process, in a cycle of reflection that is part of an action research approach to professional learning. This reflection is often self-reflection:

… undertaken by participants to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of their own practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out. (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p. 162)

Reflection is thus a key component of action research, and it is this reflective spiral of identifying a general idea, reconnaissance, general planning, developing the first action step, implementing the first action step, evaluation, revising the general plan and then repeating it all over again, as envisaged by Lewin (1946), that makes the link between action research and transformational learning. New learning leads to new action and new visions of what is possible. It is linked to a social agenda, with participants believing their work should be applied and that it should provide “valid knowledge, theoretical development and social improvements” (Greenwood & Levin, 2000, p. 87). New learning is intended to build social capacity and, as Kemmis and McTaggart (2000) put it, to improve and to involve. Furlong and Oancea (2005) have argued that the quality of such practice-based educational research must be judged against much stronger measures: not only methodological and theoretical robustness, but also the potential value for future operations and practices, as well as capacity building and value for people, particularly the participants. It is thus a methodology that is quite demanding of all involved.

There are many variations of action research, including participatory action research, where the project is totally devised and undertaken by those who are personally involved (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000), and where no outside “objective” researcher is involved. The members of such participatory action research teams must, therefore, be very rigorous in their application of quality measures because they have no external reminders or assistance. Many action research projects, however, involve outside mentors or critical friends who become part of the project but are not from the context being examined. Elliott (2008) argues that such externally moderated approaches are a phase of learning that (in his case) teacher researchers need to be involved in on their path to becoming truly independent action researchers. He points out a number of issues associated with such external moderation: some that are useful for this study, such as providing triangulation of views for the research events, but also some that could be detrimental to this study, such as when the external moderator does not sufficiently appreciate the context and misinterprets the research.

The context is very important in action research. There is an acceptance in action research that contexts will be different and that research approaches will need to adjust to the nuances of context. As Bourdieu would explain it, each agent comes to the context or “field” with different cultural capital, and as they interact in this context, the context actually changes and is modified by the struggles that occur in it. The context can never be seen as an unchanging entity and so must be constantly scrutinised in the research process (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

The adjustment to the context, and of the context, is usually associated with cycles of reflection and reconfiguration of research approaches (Saunders & Munford, 2008; Sproston, 2008). Stringer (2004) suggests a cycle of:

•&;&;developing a research design (initiating a study)

•&;&;data gathering (capturing stakeholder experience and perspectives)

•&;&;data analysis (identifying key features of experience)

•&;&;communication (writing reports)

•&;&;action (creating a solution).

Elliott’s (1991) cycle, an amended version of Lewin’s (1946) model, is an earlier version of an action research cycle that provides more scope for those not from the research community to involve themselves in an action research project. It uses language that is easily understood and is significant for all—participants, researchers and learners. Elliott’s cycle follows this pattern:

•&;&;identifying an initial idea

•&;&;reconnaissance

•&;&;establishing a general plan with a few discrete action steps

•&;&;implementing these action steps

•&;&;monitoring the results

•&;&;reconnaissance again

•&;&;amended general idea

•&;&;amended plans and action steps

and so on.

We began our study with a view to it being action research, but with some reservations as to the rigour of such an approach. We were also concerned that we were perhaps directing the study too strongly and not allowing the voices of others to emerge.

Our study, initiated by the university members, sought to involve all participants in the process and product. As a group of teacher educators at the University of Newcastle, we brainstormed ways in which we hoped to help reduce some of the tensions that were apparent at the time in our community. We decided to work with the African community because issues associated with this community were current in the local newspapers. They were a very small minority and very obvious in our community simply because of the colour of their skin. We spoke to community representatives, both of the various African groups and of community groups associated with enhancing cultural liaison. Resources were collected that had been developed to enhance community partnerships in other regions, with an emphasis on African communities. Readings were studied regarding best practice in working with other cultural groups, and specific African issues were considered.

The actual implementation involved a participatory approach to action research in that we all became participants in working through the project and its outcomes. We cannot, however, claim that it was participatory action research in the pure form espoused by Kemmis and McTaggart (2000). This is because we cannot reject our initial monopoly over the project’s inception, and because we have also developed and scrutinised the results to some extent apart from the other participants, although the results and expectations for the future have been and will continue to be discussed with all in the group. Although not strictly participant research, in that the initial impetus did not come from the insider participants, the project still followed an action research process in that as all three groups came together to solve the problem, they became insiders, in the same problem-solving context, and agreed on similar approaches to the problem.

The project developed a life of its own, with full and frank interchanges between those with different perspectives and different experiences of being a participant. University teacher educators brought outsider knowledge of other cases and other processes to bear on this specific context, the school teachers brought insider knowledge of the class and school processes and the members of the African community brought insider knowledge of how it felt to live in a new society with strong links to a different society (Parker, Webster, & John, 2010). Thus it was action research, initiated by the university partners, in order to solve a problem that all three groups felt was important.

The process of research was an issue. Stringer’s cycle (2004, see above) sounded appropriate for an environment that is relatively stable and where there is time to run through all the aspects, one after the other, then pause and go through them again. In our context, with a series of community meetings and then a fast-moving classroom teaching environment, where challenges arose constantly and had to be resolved quickly, the process was nowhere near as tidy. Just capturing it was a challenge in itself. Elliott’s (1991) cycle seemed more appropriate and easily adapted for the purpose of explaining what we did and how our learning evolved. Our biggest challenge was formulating the plan, talking through the perspectives we all brought to the table and coming to an agreed view of the way forward. Much of the action research therefore came before we even implemented the plan. An overview of the process is developed below. We monitored the progress of the study as an action research project via regular reflective logs written by all participants, and what follows is some explanation of the process of the action planning, supported by these reflective diaries.

The action research process

Cycle 1

Initiation of an idea

Three university lecturers sat down to work out what we could do to help dissipate community tensions about the contribution of Sudanese refugees to our community. We decided that creative arts were a good vehicle for this and began to investigate ways in which we could use them.

Reconnaissance

Our initial investigations considered which areas of creative arts would be more valuable (music, visual arts, dance or drama) and how they could link to geographic place knowledge. We also investigated sources of funding and schools that would be interested in being involved. We contacted various multicultural groups for support, read about best practice involving African refugee communities in Australia and overseas and read about best practice in antiracist projects.

Plan: Establishing a curriculum

A programme based on Sudan was prepared, involving dance, music, drama and visual arts, with a visual display to remain as ongoing evidence of the project and some emphasis on geographic place knowledge. We identified a school that was prepared to investigate this issue and were granted ethics approval to do the study. Meetings were planned with the school group and the African community group.

University staff reflections at this stage were mainly focused on planning appropriate activities and identifying groups who could assist in such a project. The idea to concentrate on Sudan came because we wanted to acknowledge the diversity of the African continent and did not want to give students the feeling that all Africa was the same. It was felt that emphasis on one culture could better exemplify its uniqueness. Reflective logs highlighted the concerns of the academic staff regarding this workload in addition to everyday university commitments. The funding was not as generous as we had hoped, leaving nothing for relief from marking or teaching. This added to the pressure of the project for the academic staff.

Implement plan: Part A—liaison with school participants

The university staff visited the school and discussed ideas for activities with the principal and teachers, who were very enthusiastic because the planning supported teaching outcomes they had planned as well as the values of the school. Times were negotiated, physical constraints discussed and integration with social studies and the school routine, etc. was negotiated.

Monitor plan: Part A

University staff reflections indicated relief that they had like-minded colleagues at the school level:

… so pleased to have such enthusiastic schoolies. Principal is also on board and very obliging and helpful.

Implement plan: Part B—liaison with African community

The university staff then attended the African community meeting, led by the Community Multicultural Officer, with a view to concentrating on one country, Sudan. We brought along some ideas that had been planned (songs, stories, artwork, drama) and that had been endorsed by the school participants. Our plan was to include African members of the local community in all aspects of the teaching programme. However, we did not want everyone from the African community interest group (about 10 people) to come along on every day of the project, as we wanted to commence slowly. Many of the young children at the school, who were primarily Anglo-Australian children aged seven to nine, had never seen a black person. We felt we could better “intermesh” if all groups (teachers, academics, the African community) had a small number of representatives and so had to work together and not divide off into African group in one corner, school teachers in another, university people in another. Our emphasis was on engagement, and we felt it was important to include African members in the activities in the first session, not display them as exhibits.

However, the first meeting did not go as well as the academics would have liked, and our ideas did not seem to be appreciated at all. There was no acknowledgement that we would lead this project. Our African participants fought for an African perspective all the way through. This was how we learnt from each other. One of the initial issues was that the African community members had a different vision of teaching, a vision that at first we did not appreciate. Their focus was on explicit teaching. They did not understand how the interactive teaching classroom the academics envisaged would be enacted. The academic perspective was to inductively lead the children to an appreciation of difference and diversity; the African community were more focused on telling the students why the African people were here and what issues they encountered, presented as exposition. Also, because they were from different parts of Africa, they did not want to concentrate on one country but all wanted to contribute. Their voices are paraphrased below:

We want to tell them about how hard it has been for us, we want to tell them how many of us have chosen to come to Australia, many of us are not refugees, many of us are well educated, they need to know our history, our problems, how long we have waited in refugee camps to come here, how we have learnt to speak English, how we desperately want to belong to this community, how we are all different shapes and colours, including white Africans.

Monitor plan: Part B

After this meeting the university staff felt as though they had lost some of the power over the project, some of us feeling that it was a backward step and others considering what this would mean in practice:

Meeting was a little tense—they had other ideas. They wanted to run the sessions without us. They did not like the focus on Sudan.

Cycle 2

Reconnaissance and revise plan: A new proposal

The strategy after this meeting was to revisit the plan in order to take on board the concerns of the African community while allowing our knowledge of pedagogy in Australia and child development to be respected. The focus was changed to Africa generally and the activities were organised to involve the African community more strongly in the teaching. The content was changed to focus on the people of Africa rather than the scenery, animals and so on. The university staff discussed ways we could educate on pedagogy. Precise roles for the different groups in the teaching (teachers, African community members, university staff) were set out. One university staff member wrote this after that meeting:

Now let’s see if we can cope with nonexperts telling us how to do things. Their personal contribution could strengthen this.

Implement plan 2: Meeting with the African community

The quite confrontational discussions of the first meeting continued. There did not seem to be an acknowledgement that the activities had been substantially changed to incorporate the African community perspectives. A little more explicit teaching had been placed into the formula, and a gradual passing over of the teaching to the community was planned.

When the decision had been made to incorporate all the traditions of Africa, Sue, a music educator from the university, included a welcome song from Ghana that was very interactive and appropriate for this age group (seven to nine years). This was strongly questioned: “We are not from Ghana.” To us, the African participants seemed not to be considering teaching strategies, and to them, we were not specifically tailoring the programme to the individuals who were part of this community group. We continued to struggle with communication at different levels and in different areas.

It became increasingly obvious that pedagogy was viewed in different ways by the two groups. On the one hand, the university staff felt that it was necessary to educate the African community about age-appropriate pedagogy in Australia. On the other hand, it was obvious that the diversity of experiences and perspectives of this African group was not being taken into account by the academics. The academics were planning for incidental interaction between groups, but the African community members did not see how that could happen in the highly structured classrooms they envisaged. The meeting ended in an impasse, with neither group seeing a way forward.

Monitor plan 2

University educators reflect

A bit confused by the African community reaction. Feel they have a different agenda and it was difficult to convey the purpose of the project from our perspective. Left feeling rather disappointed that our project was ‘rejected’ by the African community.

Cycle 3

Reconnaissance and plan 3

Sue had a personal connection with one of the African members from Kenya, who already had respect for her teaching skills, and the two of them negotiated a way forward via email. Both groups wanted to implement the project and so it was more a matter of building trust. No one wanted the project to fail. We decided to encourage the members of the African community to come along on the first day at the school and see what we were doing, and then to participate when they wanted to. Activities were established where all could join in, or not, as they wished. This initial session was primarily led by the university staff, with the idea that on subsequent visits members of the African community could take a larger role. The university staff worked hard to communicate with each and every member of the African community who attended, talking about why we did what we did, as well as encouraging their views on how they could contribute. Ruth also offered readings about why we were doing the things we did.

Monitor school visit 1

African community members reflect on activities

The African community members wrote of their enjoyment of the day, with some analysing the activities for their pedagogical appropriateness. As well as talking to everyone about research on changing attitudes, Ruth started giving everyone papers on this, which actually seemed to help clarify things better than oral conversations. Perhaps the written has more authority? These published articles appear to have helped establish some sort of “pedagogical authority”, as Bourdieu would phrase it (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) for the academic lecturers.

The exercise brought a conducive atmosphere where ‘we’ from the African background interacted positively in the first place. Something that ‘we’ never thought would be achieved due to the negative judgements about Africans [judged from newspaper articles].

The young children did not seem to have the same prejudices as the older Australians seemed to have. This member of the African community was surprised to see how well they were accepted by the children and the school, and this made such a difference!

University educators reflect

Painting activities were a bit chaotic. Spaces too small for number of students. Time allocated was difficult with such large groups. However, painting exploration was fun, if not messy and noisy!

At the end of the first teaching experience we were concerned about the attitude of the teachers who were worried about mess and cleaning up and so on, rather than the Africans who were pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm of the children and school and the focus on engaging the students—a whole new range of issues and perspectives to circumvent and to accommodate.

Cycle 4

Reconnaissance and plan 4

This was an adaption of the types of activities we had used in plan 3. We continued to include the African community members more strongly and worked with the teachers to sort out the routines and logistics a bit better. Our attempts to use drama were abandoned because we just did not have the time. We spent time talking to teachers and African community members about education in the countries they had come from and about their lives here in Australia, and their difficulties living here (language, bureaucracy, prejudice and so on). This whole project emphasised the value of communication: the need to talk all the issues through to try to establish common understanding and then uncover where we did not understand. We had moved from a stance of asserting dominance over all aspects to trying to share the power in various areas—to change the structure of the field to allow all views to be heard.

Monitoring school visit 2

African community members reflect

Mixing up an African traditional songs/drama was important, it widens students’ knowledge in various arts styles. Not only that, it also make it easier and how togetherness can be achieved through songs, drama and sharing in painting.

University educators reflect

Much more positive session. Activities linked well—one leading into the next. African community members very helpful with singing and weaving activities. Felt that activities related well to research into African fabrics—students responded well. One student commented ‘This is a fun way to learn!’ We worked hard gradually introducing African people in as teachers—they too followed our lead—great collaboration.

Cycle 5

Reconnaissance and plan 5

More information on the geography of Africa was presented, greetings were shared in African languages, murals and collages were completed in small groups and dancing and singing were led by the African community members. This session saw us as university staff retreat more into the background and the teachers and the African community members take a stronger lead. The second half of this session was totally led by the African community members, who gradually became more confident. All were relieved that it had gone as well as it had. Students were looking forward to us arriving and were happily chatting to the African community members. As this was the final session, fond farewells were given all around.

Monitoring school visit 3

African community members reflect

Everything went very well—though the format of the programme is rather vague. No problems—everything was wonderful. Students were very involved and interested.

Very gratifying experience which I would love to repeat.

University educators reflect

Was great—I felt we had really done it. Students were talking and engaging with people, asking questions and learning language. Relief.

However, we were all exhausted with the stress of interacting with groups who hold different views from oneself.

Effects on students’ knowledge and attitudes

We monitored the effects on students’ knowledge of Africa as well as their attitude to the peoples of Africa by a number of methods. These included:

•&;&;assessment of students’ maps of the world before and after our teaching experiences

•&;&;students’ drawings about other places in the world

•&;&;students’ lists of places they know in the world, before and after the teaching experiences

•&;&;noting all the places the students liked or disliked before, immediately after the teaching and three months after the teaching experiences

•&;&;an attitude scale, recording attitudes to Africa taken before, immediately after and three months after the teaching experiences (based on and adapted from Griffin et al., 2002; it consisted of five subscales that were linked to the attitude domains of Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia, 1964).

It was found that Africa appeared on the maps much more consistently and more accurately after we had spent time in that classroom. Students’ maps also featured more of the strong geographic features of the African continent after the teaching experiences. The mention of Africa increased in the lists of known “countries” in the world, but the individual countries of Africa only appeared occasionally. After the intervention, Africa appeared much more frequently on the lists of countries liked and was less apparent on the list of countries disliked. This was a gratifying result for all our efforts.

Effects on participants’ understanding of action research

All groups—teachers, African community members and academics— came to have a much better idea of how messy such an interactive project can be. All groups lost some of their control of the situation and all groups gained some new understanding of what others can contribute. We certainly came to realise that there is no recipe for such community-based projects, and that what seems to be a good solution is not necessarily so. The use of the reflective logs proved invaluable in recording the progress of learning for the participants. Reading the feelings and ideas of all concerned as we progressed through the visits helped validate our ideas and led us to realise that there is no set cycle of action research that will be appropriate for every context.

Conclusion

We thus had some success. We have enough evidence in the reflective logs to indicate that we saw increased interest and excitement from university educators and African community members to indicate that each group had a renewed faith in each other. The voice of the school teachers was not as obvious; they were, however, feeding us their responses and we responded (for example, too much mess associated with the painting). The teachers were a little in awe of us and we had to work hard to enable them to see us as fellow teachers. It was obvious that they had handed to us the right to assert our own view of pedagogical action, bowing to the power that university academia tends to give us, allowing us to dominate the proceedings with our symbolic power. However, in the world of school practicalities they needed to assert their own authority over procedures such as cleaning up and smooth transitions to other areas of learning. There was, however, no doubt that we had an immediate effect on the students’ knowledge of the world, and on their attitude to Africa and attitudes to others, and some of that effect continued even after three months.

This action research experience had a number of wider implications for future projects of this type. As noted, it demonstrated very clearly the messiness of the teaching experience. As Liston, Whitcomb and Borko (2009) point out, the wisdom of teacher practice is much messier than any certainties about best practice we can provide and is filled with human and educational tension that reveal multiple fallibilities. The continued conversations in our study revealed some very different ways of approaching teaching and led us to fundamentally question the way we taught and the objectives we were trying to achieve. It was more than just about the children; it was about us as teachers, community members and academics learning to appreciate a different point of view about the fundamental aims of and approaches to education.

Initially, neither the university lecturers nor the African community members were prepared to allow the other the authority to impose their pedagogical actions and accord legitimacy to their point of view. Each group used its habitus to justify its position. The two cultures had their own histories, dispositions and ways of acting, which made it difficult to reach a common ground upon which to build. Eventually, however, because there was a common end point desired by both groups, we began to trust each other a little more and to educate each other on our various positions, and so the field changed. The power shifted continually between the two groups, with each group allowing the other to take the power when they felt they could, and yet taking it back at certain times.

In the end, we as university lecturers wrote this story, so did we dominate in this pedagogical work? Or were we given this power as a gesture of resistance by our African partners? Who actually learnt and achieved the most? The point is that it does not really matter. If groups are to reach across culturally distant spaces they need to trust as well as accept that there will always be things that will remain a mystery to the other. As Bourdieu and Passeron point out:

The man who deliberates on his culture is already cultivated and the questions of the man who thinks he is questioning the principles of his upbringing still have their roots in his upbringing. (1977, p. 37)

We all have our habitus with which we position ourselves in different contexts. We cannot and do not want to expunge this. What we have to do is work out ways to understand each other a little better and to allow others to assist us to do this. This should be a major role for teaching as, after all, the process of a teaching event is a much more substantial outcome than the product (Elliott, 1991). Going out of your comfort zone to address an issue is a journey that involves a constant state of self-reflection and emotional turmoil. We need teaching to continue to be a contestation of differing views and a site of turmoil if we are to engage with others meaningfully.

References

Allen, W. (1993). Running on rainbows: A Life Be In It art program. Fortitude Valley, QLD: Running on Rainbows.

Asia Education Foundation. (2006). National statement for engaging young Australians with Asia in Australian schools. Carlton South, VIC: Curriculum Corporation.

Australian Council of Deans of Education. (2004). New teaching, new learning: A vision for Australian education. Canberra: Author.

Black, M. S. (2000). The geography of connection: Bringing the world to students. Social Studies, 64(6), 354–359.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage.

Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cameron, J. A., Alvarez, J. M., Ruble, D. N., & Fuligni, A. J. (2001). Children’s lay theories about Ingroups and Outgroups: Reconceptualising research on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(2), 118–128.

Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical. Melbourne: Deakin University Press.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Council of Australian Governments. (1994). Asian languages and Australia’s economic future [The Rudd Report]. Brisbane: Government Printer.

Curriculum Corporation. (1996). Access Asia: Primary teaching and learning units. Melbourne: Author.

Dadds, M. (2008). Empathetic validity in practitioner research. Educational Action Research, 16(2), 279–290.

Delors, J. (1996). Learning: The treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Demaine, J. (Ed.). (2004). Citizenship and political education today. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Eisner, E. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Elliott, J. (1991). Action research for educational change. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.

Elliott, J. (2008). Assessing the quality of action research. In J. Furlong & A. Oancea (Eds.), Assessing quality in applied practice-based research in education (pp. 109–126). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Furlong, J., & Oancea, A. (2005). Report on assessing quality in applied and practice-based educational research. Oxford: Oxford University Department of Educational Studies.

Greenwood, D. J., & Levin, M. (2000). Reconstructing the relationships between universities and society through action research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Griffin, P., Woods, K., Dulhunty, M., & Coates, H. (2002). Australian students’ knowledge and understanding of Asia. Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training.

Harrington, V. (1998). Teaching about distant places. In S. Scoffham (Ed.), Primary sources: Research findings in primary geography (pp. 46–47). Sheffield, UK: The Geographical Association.

Hill, B., & Allan, R. (2004). Multicultural education in Australia: Historical development and current status. In J. A. Banks & C. A McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 763–777). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (2000). Participatory action research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 567–605). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Krathwohl, D., Bloom, B., & Masia, B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook II: Affective domain. New York: David McKay.

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2, 34–36.

Lingard, B. (2005). Socially just pedagogies in changing times. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 15(2), 165–186.

Liston, D., Whitcomb, J., & Borko, H. (2009). The end of education in teacher education: Thoughts on reclaiming the role of social foundations in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(2), 107–111.

Parker, J., Webster, J., & John, T. (2010). Preserving a space for cross-cultural collaborations: An account of insider/outsider issues. Ethnography and Education, 5(2), 175–191.

Pickering, S. (2007). What do children really learn? Primary Geographer, 62(Spring), 13–15.

Reynolds, R. (2004). Children’s attitudes to the world. Social Educator, 22(3), 52–62.

Saunders, J., & Munford, R. (2008). Building action focused research in social care organisations. Educational Action Research, 16(1), 19–30.

Shaeffer, S., & Englehardt, R. (2006). Improving the quality of education: The role of arts education. Retrieved 24 August 2010, from http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-IRL_ID=30075&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Sproston, C. (2008). When students negotiate: An action research case study of a year 8 English class in a secondary college in Victoria, Australia. Educational Action Research, 16(2), 187–208.

Stringer, E. (2004). Action research in education. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson.

UNESCO. (n.d.). Statement on arts education and multiculturalism. Retrieved 24 August 2010, from http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8217&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Weigand, P. (1992). Places in the primary school: Knowledge and understandings of places at Key Stages 1 and 2. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

The authors

Ruth Reynolds is the Program Convenor Masters of Education (Primary) at the University of Newcastle. She has expertise in university/school partnerships and pedagogy in teacher education and lectures in curriculum and pedagogy, with emphasis on social education. She is a member of a number of national teaching committees, was a past President of the Social Educators’ Association of Australia and regularly works in school partnership projects.

Sue Lane is the co-ordinator of the creative arts area of the primary teaching programme at the University of Newcastle at the Ourimbah Campus and in the master’s programme at the Callaghan Campus. Prior to teaching at the university she taught music and dance in several primary schools. She is an active member of the Orff Schulwerk Association of NSW, acting in the role of bulletin editor. She is a regular presenter at Orff Schulwerk professional development courses.