Abstract:
The importance of developing Asia capable young Australians is now emphasized in national school policy documents. The Melbourne Declaration notes that all ‘Australians need to become “Asia literate” ‘ and able to ‘relate to and communicate across cultures, especially the cultures and countries of Asia’ (Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, 2008, p.9). It follows that achieving the goal of Asia literacy is dependent upon on an Asia-literate teaching profession. However, a recent study suggests that ‘a majority of teachers completed their initial teacher education without addressing teaching and learning about Asia’ (Halse, Cloonan, Dyer, Kostogriz, Toe, & Weinmann 2013, p. 3). This paper draws from one component of an exploratory case study that investigated the ways in which secondary History pre-service teachers engaged with digital resources in order to develop their intercultural understanding about the countries of Asia and about Asians in Australia. In particular, it examines how pre-service teachers engaged with digital resources through a bibliographic dataset of Asian-Australian children’s literature, the Asian-Australian Children’s Literature and Publishing project, and the degree to which they become more aware of what it means to be an Asia literate beginning teacher. Survey and interview data were used to analyse how pre-service teachers conceptualised the roles children’s literature might play in fostering ideas about Australia’s changing relationship with Asia and how they might develop pedagogical approaches to examining children’s literature in the history classroom together with primary and secondary sources. Participants in the study were also asked to consider how ‘empathy’ might be conceptualised as part of the process of becoming ‘Asia literate’ and the ways in which an empathetic understanding can be developed in the Australian Curriculum: History by engaging students with Asian Australian children’s literature. In the analysis of the research data consideration is given to a view of education for Asia literacy and that goes beyond instrumentalist approaches which foreground the economic and strategic notions of engagement with the countries of the Asia region.