Interrogating the promise of a whole-school approach to intercultural education: An Australian investigation

Abstract

Intercultural education (ICE) is a priority for schools and schooling systems worldwide. While extensive policy and academic literature exists that describes how ICE should be done in schools, relatively little has been published about the pragmatics of implementing and enacting ICE, despite evidence that principals, teachers and schools feel ill equipped to teach and engage in ICE. This article investigates how schools implementing ICE are confronted with distinctive challenges. Engaging methodological tools of social constructivism (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005) and an analytical lens supported by social cultural theories of identity and representation (Hall, 1997; Gee, 2004), we argue that the everyday experiences and practices of teachers need be explored, but also interrogated and understood otherwise (Lather, 1991). We draw on qualitative data from a large-scale study conducted in schools in Victoria, Australia. We present three vignettes that elucidate how ICE was enacted at the principal, curriculum and teacher levels. Each vignette is based upon a key challenge confronted by schools and illustrates the processes different schools used to tackle these issues and to embed ICE into the daily schooling practice.

Introduction

Transnational flows of refugees, migrants and workers have enriched the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity within nations but also raised new social, political and economic challenges for nation states, including increased tensions and conflicts. Responding to these conditions, many supranational agencies such as the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have assigned schools with responsibility for ensuring that young people have the intercultural knowledge and skills to build inclusive, cohesive multicultural societies for the future (UNESCO, 2006, 2010a, 2013). Consequently, countries across Europe have taken up the agenda of intercultural education (ICE) by introducing schooling policies and curriculum to promote cultural knowledge, foster positive relations between racial and ethnic groups, build students’ intercultural knowledge and capacity for cultural sensitivity, and skilful interactions between different ethnic and social groups (Puzic, 2008; Council of Europe, 2010). The move, away from multiculturalism, and towards intercultural understanding (ICU) has been engaged with variously, internationally (UNESCO 2010a) and nationally EU (Council of Europe, 2010), Australia (ACARA, 2014) with differentiated emphases, approaches and strategies (Puzic, 2008, Faas, 2008, Leeman and Reid, 2006, García-Carrión and Díez-Palomar, 2015; Gewirtz and Cribb, 2008). A common critique within the academic literature of these policies has been the understanding that such a move would displace the cultural assimilation and majority domination of the past, commonly attributed to policies and programs of multiculturalism. The European Commission 2008, for instance, argues for programmes which affirm cultural diversity, build intercultural dialogue and reduce ethnocentrism (see Puzic, 2008).

Nonetheless it is clear that schools implementing ICE are confronted with a number of distinctive challenges that are embedded and related to the historic and current nature of schooling systems, their curriculum and the mandates made upon teachers whose practices and professional knowledge are limited by these and mandates made on their time and professional practice.

Australia has introduced ICU into its national curriculum for primary and secondary schooling as a prescribed general capability that all students are expected to acquire by the time they finish school (ACARA, 2014). The ICU capability aims to develop young people who will be ‘active and informed citizens with an appreciation of Australia’s social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity, and the ability to relate to and communicate across cultures at local, regional and global levels’ (ACARA, 2014). It targets the development of three ‘intercultural dispositions’ – expressing empathy, demonstrating respect and taking responsibility – to nurture open-minded, critically aware students with the positive ‘intercultural behaviours [for] learning to live together’ (ACARA, 2014).

Theoretical background

Crucially, the everyday experiences and practices of ICU in schools are constructed and reconstructed contextually within the institutional systems and within the social, cultural normative conditions of the school life (Bourdieu, 1986). Australian research explores the impact of class, race (Rizvi, 2011; Arber, 2008), gender (Blackmore, 2013) and post-colonialism (Rizvi, 2009), on the ways in which school structures and normative practices include some students differently to others. More recent studies explore the ways in which neo-liberal thought and practice (Weinmann and Arber, 2017) globalisation, transnationalism and digital practices have changed the ways that the spaces and places of the school and community, and the ways that identity, habitat and flows of people, ideas, cultures and languages, can be understood and conceptualised (Rizvi, 2009; Vertovec, 2001).

A key issue in the field of ICE is the lack of research about how education leaders can build the intercultural knowledge, skills and the expertise of teaching staff in their schools (Halse et al., 2016). The three cases discussed in this article elucidate different approaches to ICE, designed and implemented by Australian school leaders of varied levels, and applied in different contexts to various aspects of school life. They exemplify leaders’ responses to national policy reform and the enactment of ICE in schools. The vignettes provide examples of how schools can focus upon and nurture the intangible and relational aspects of cultural diversity such as demonstrating care, reciprocity, respect, empathy and responsibility (ACARA, 2014).

This paper is framed within Hall’s analysis of representation. In this, he describes that we know the world through language even as it is simultaneously framed by language. Hall’s conceptualisation of identity and representation explores how the notion of identity is constructed and negotiated and mediated within the frame of language and culture as a multi-dimensional and reflexive construct defining and shaping normativity and difference. We apply these understandings to our analysis of the data, working through the ways in which the teachers and school leaders in our study position themselves and others, and how they work ICU into the daily workings of school life.

Arber (2010), notes that together symbolic, embodied and normative terms and conditions create a ‘terrain of imagination’ (2010: 9), that describe ways of understanding and being in the world in the process of constructing that understanding. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus (2000), we consider the following.

The agent engaged in practice knows the world but with knowledge which is not set up, in the relation of externality of a knowing consciousness. He knows it, in a sense, too well… Takes it for granted, precisely because he is caught up in it, bound up with it, he inhabits I like a garment or a familiar habitat,’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 143).

In drawing on teachers’ practice within the normative context of Australian schools, in these next vignettes we seek to unravel the everyday teaching practices within school and take on the challenge to ‘make the familiar strange’ (Wright Mills, 1959).

Study setting

Australian curriculum documents conceptualise the rationale for their programmes as being a pragmatic approach to ICU drawn from many different theoretical frames. The ACARA document outlines theoretical frames including those of cultural studies (Hall, 1997), language education (Crozet et al., 1999; Kramsch, 1998) and multicultural education (Banks and McGee Banks, 2004; Collins et al., 2000). The document goes on to note that it has made an attempt to move forward and not essentialise the other but to know the other. Literature has noted how, despite such intentions conceptualised within the preamble to the document, its conceptualisation of ‘identity’ as changing and constructed, in the process, crucial elements within the policies and practices, such as those of ‘the concept “competencies” continue(s) to legitimize, essentialize and standardize skills and knowledges related to culture, identity and difference’ (Mansouri and Arber, 2017: 39). Moreover, the notion of ‘standards’ retains a monolingual mindset in which some of us can define the competencies of who they are. That is, the very notion of developing competencies is a colour-blind notion, in that it assumes that the examination board can define who people are and what defines them.

Despite such macro-level initiatives, insights into the enactment of intercultural policy and curricula in schools is also limited. As Coulby (2011) cautions, the ‘vastness of the intercultural ambition’ makes implementation challenging, particularly when principals, teachers and schools struggle to deal with a crowded curriculum, the range of languages and cultures in schools, restricted financial and linguistic resources, the limited capacity of some teachers to relate to migrant children (p.114), and the pressures of competing mandatory curriculum and assessment priorities, for example in literacy and numeracy (Toner, 2010).

More specifically, evidence suggests that many teachers and principals lack the knowledge, skills and confidence to engage with ICE and ensure meaningful intercultural learning among students (Faas et al., 2014; Leeman, 2008; Leeman and Reid, 2006; Niemi et al., 2014). A succession of research confirms that teachers’ need professional training to develop their intercultural knowledge and capacity is (Burns and Shadoian-Gersing, 2010; Freeman et al., 2012; Leeman and Reid, 2006; Miller, 2011; Toner, 2010; Walton et al., 2014). The 2007–2008 OECD Teaching and International Survey (TALIS) of 90,000 teachers across 23 countries, for example, found that an overwhelming majority of teachers do not receive sufficient professional training to handle or evaluate challenging situations arising from working with students from different languages, cultures and religions (Bezzina and Butcher, 2008; Burns and Shadoian-Gersing, 2010; Hollingworth, 2009; Jensen, 2010).

A lack of intercultural knowledge and skills among teachers has detrimental effects. It can nurture ‘colour-blind’ approaches whereby teachers avoid engaging with the intercultural and moral issues arising from intercultural interactions in class (Walton et al., 2014); reduce ICE to the tokenistic acknowledgement of cultural differences or learning about the ‘culture’ of ‘other’ people – the ‘food, flags and festivals’ approach – rather than developing students’ capacity and interest to engage with cultural difference (Toner, 2010); work against the perpetuation of assimilationist attitudes (Hajisoteriou, 2010) and disrupt the notions, systems and practices which shape everyday experiences of identity and belonging.

In setting up our project, we decided to take a whole-school approach to enable us to support schools to systematically develop intercultural knowledge and skills with their teachers, students and broader community. Whole-school approaches have previously been identified as a successful means for instigating change and creating a culture of change (Hargreaves and Goodson, 2006). The research literature provides examples of successful school change with a whole-school approach to a range of areas such as numeracy and literacy (Fullan, 2006), restorative justice (Morrison et al., 2005) and school connectedness (Rowe et al., 2007). Despite the fact that culturally inclusive learning environments have been found to have positive impacts on student outcomes and education practice (Arber, 2008; Gillborn, 2008), ours is one of the very few longitudinal studies on the effects of whole-school approaches to ICE, as most studies present short-term, isolated approaches, often identifying underfunded ICE.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how school leaders (principals, curriculum leaders, teachers, etc.) build intercultural knowledge, skills and expertise in their schools.

Study approach

This article advocates the adoption of a multi-faceted, multilevel approach to ICE in schools, drawing on qualitative data from a large-scale, multi-method study conducted in Australian primary and secondary schools. The article draws on data collected as part of an Australia Research Council funded study: Doing Diversity: Intercultural understanding in primary and secondary schools (Halse et al., 2016). A key goal of the study was to identify what types of strategies schools developed or selected, to build interculturality into their policies and practices, to elucidate the reasons for these choices, and to identify the factors that facilitate and those that impede intercultural learning and practices.

The study was built around an integrated process we called the ‘Doing Diversity Approach’ that involved: building teacher and school capacity; supporting schools to take responsibility; and collecting and sharing research evidence. An academic mentor from the project team worked with each school as a critical friend, providing suggestions about how schools could strengthen their intercultural initiatives, as well as collecting research data, and providing feedback on emergent findings. In addition, the researchers provided a series of learning opportunities for staff in the participating schools. As a starting point, this included an introduction to three, free online professional learning modules for teachers, developed by our project partner, Together for Humanity Foundation, and entitled ‘Difference Differently’.

Face-to-face learning workshops were also conducted. In the first year the project team led two, two-day conferences for school principals and curriculum leaders. Each conference comprised of two components: (a) lectures by ICE experts on a range of topics (e.g. theories of diversity, racism/race relations and intercultural competencies; research knowledge about intercultural learning and effective intercultural pedagogies; and evaluating and assessing intercultural competencies of teachers and students); and (b) a series of practical interactive workshops to illustrate how intercultural learning could be integrated in teaching different curriculum areas, including maths, literacy, science, etc.

In Year 2 of the study, a different model of teacher learning was introduced to encourage greater knowledge sharing and school-level responsibility for building their intercultural capacities, while still providing a supportive learning framework. Schools were clustered into four ‘learning networks’ supported by an academic mentor and tasked with developing and implementing a learning programme specific to the needs of the teachers and schools in their network. This design meant the activities across networks varied widely and ranged, for example, from teacher exchanges and school site visits to sharing pedagogical content knowledge, to the development of collaborative, cross-school teaching programmes for students. A collective ‘showcase day’ was held at the end of both Years 1 and 2 as a knowledge sharing strategy. Schools reported on the strategies they had used to implement ICE during the year, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and shared suggestions and advice about future directions (Halse et al., 2016).

There were six primary and six secondary schools in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia in the project, and comprised a purposive, maximum variation sample in terms of geographic location, size, students’ ethnic and language backgrounds, and school community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA). Multiple methods of data collection were used, including repeated surveys of students and teachers, interviews with principals, students and lead teachers in the project, focus groups with teachers and students, observations of school operations, events and activities, analysis of school websites, artefacts and use of space, and annual, individual interviews with students.

We have reported elsewhere on the findings from these discrete data sources (Halse et al., 2016), in relation to substantive areas of literacy (Cloonan et al., 2014) and teachers’ professional learning (Cloonan et al., 2017), and on the theoretical findings in relation to racism in schools (Charles et al., 2015; Halse, 2015).

In this article, we discuss three previously unreported case studies of practice that were constructed through a synthesis of our multiple forms of data and analyses, with particular attention paid to identity and representation. The three case studies presented here are relatively short and succinct, however each case describes the work done by different intercultural leaders – for example, a principal, a curriculum leader or a teacher – in different schools. These are instrumental case studies. They were selected because the purpose is to provide insights into the processes used by school leaders within the bounded site of each school, and thereby extend knowledge and theory about how education leaders at different levels in schools can build the intercultural knowledge, skills and expertise of teaching colleagues.

We begin by presenting the three vignettes drawn from longer case studies. We provide a thematic analysis of these vignettes and discuss the ways schools enacted ICE. Following this, we discuss the similarities and differences in the processes, procedures and strategies observed in an enactment of an intercultural approach in schools and schooling practice.

The three case studies

Case 1: A school principal

As school leaders, principals are challenged with the important work of leading the school community focus upon ICE. This vignette examines how one principal began the process of building the intercultural capability of the staff in a school. It presents her initial thoughts and the strategy that she developed and enacted to introduce ICE into her school.

As an experienced principal, who had seen the rise and fall of various educational initiatives over the years, her first priority was to ensure she and the staff developed a well-informed, shared understanding of ICE. She strongly believed that ICU goes beyond learning ‘about’ cultural, racial and religious ‘others’ and that it is about ethical human interactions and ways of communicating and being. Uncertain as to whether the staff in her school shared this understanding, she facilitated a discussion during the weekly Staff Meeting and presented possible definitions of ICU.

Staff were asked to discuss and arrange these definitions to identify which definitions they identified most strongly with. The principal was concerned that some staff members felt that ICE was best served by annual multicultural days. The principal wanted to emphasise the importance of learning to communicate with and understand one another across cultural differences.

The principal supported her staff by conducting a teacher-learning session focused on ICU. Deciding that a top-down approach alone (with management enforcing particular views) was unlikely to be effective in shaping staff views of ICE, she engaged staff in learning activities, which provided them with opportunities to reflect upon their own cultural backgrounds and those of the students they teach. She encouraged them to discuss and identify the sub-cultures within the school and to reflect on how well school community members from varied cultural backgrounds got along with one another. and the staff identified the nuances that they associated with these cultures, leading them to share associated stories and experiences.

This vignette illustrates how the initial superficial understanding of language and culture resulted in what has been described as a ‘foods, flags and festivals’ approach in the school, as well as supporting a common conception of intercultural relations as ‘colour-blind’ in that these teachers were described as feeling that everyone is basically the same, except that they have different and rather exotic festivals and food. The principal’s focus upon the importance of establishing a common language and developing shared deeper understandings as the starting point for enactment of ICE, based on the premise that one’s thoughts and beliefs guide and underpin one’s actions, enabled both the commonalities and the tensions that underpin ICE to be approached. Once established, the principal hoped that these would inherently underpin and shape the daily interactions that occur amongst her staff and between staff and students.

Case 2: A curriculum leader

In the Australian national curriculum, as in many other countries, ICE is not a discrete subject but is something that is intended to be embedded across multiple curriculum areas. School leaders are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that ICE permeates all curriculum areas. This type of cross-curriculum work is commonly a challenge for teachers (Cloonan, 2015).

This case examines an approach adopted by the Head of Curriculum at a secondary school. This person had long and varied experience in leading positions in government schools in an array of contexts and wanted to ensure that ICE became a part of every subject area. Committed to providing a school context that supports the building of intercultural capacity, she developed a strategic approach to beginning whole-school curriculum change, which was multi-faceted and involved a number of steps. She reflected upon the school’s existing practices and programmes in search of areas that needed or already espoused ICE. Although she found that some areas focused upon acknowledgement of diversity and inclusion, she became aware that the school did not have a unified, consistent approach or plan for ICE.

The Head of Curriculum adopted a very concrete approach that involved mapping out the requirements of ICE from the national curriculum against the school’s current policy, curriculum and practices. Her imperative was to ensure that ICE was genuinely embedded within the school curriculum as a means of impacting student learning and that all staff (principals and teachers) were confident in understanding their role within the process. Her examination of these documents enabled her to identify and summarise the pertinent curriculum requirements by mapping them out diagrammatically. This synthesised visual representation served as a valuable resource that she referred to as she worked closely with the principal and leading teachers to evaluate whether their array of school policies and school’s practices aligned with the mandated documents and ICE.

Furthermore, she met with the school’s curricular discipline groups and they reflected upon their present commitment and approach to ICE and the ways these could be augmented or changed. The teachers worked across curriculum disciplines to develop and introduce programmes and resources that focused positive emphasis upon international and local identities. In an attempt to nurture intercultural capacity amongst staff, the Head of Curriculum concurrently announced updates about the school’s progress in enacting ICE during weekly Staff Meetings and once a month facilitated teacher-learning activities that provided the space for staff to engage in dialogue, reflection and to develop action plans for addressing associated issues that arose. For example, one week the staff discussed and considered colour-blindness in relation to intercultural capability (Walton et al., 2014).

In this manner, the focus upon ICE became an on-going, active part of everyday school practice with teachers inadvertently forming a community of practice around ICE, discussing, planning and enacting policy and transforming curriculum. The Head of Curriculum scaffolded teachers as they transformed policy and curriculum into engaging learning experiences for students, who subsequently were able to apply intercultural knowledge into their own everyday practices. This whole-school approach instigated a direction of school redesign which moved towards changing the overall school mores and everyday practices.

Case 3: A teacher

With ICE on the agenda, there is a clear expectation that teachers should address incidents of racism that arise in the school community. This case is about the challenge for primary school teachers to discuss ICE in schools.

A primary school teacher recounted several incidents where he had to respond to incidents in the playground, which he felt were complex. One of the incidents was a conflict between two Muslim girls, both of whom were wearing a hijab. Outside during lunch break, one girl accused the other of being rebellious, religiously unobservant and deserving of punishment. She abruptly and forcefully pulled the other girl’s hijab off her head and deliberately tried to humiliate her in the presence of her peers. The teacher felt uneasy about this incident. The teacher also described witnessing one boy calling another boy ‘black’ during a school football match. In both cases, the teacher’s immediate response was to intervene expressing his distaste towards this kind of behaviour. However, upon reflection, the teacher felt personally and professionally dissatisfied with his response and classified it more as a knee-jerk reaction, likened to a theatrical style performance. Nonetheless, as a professional he believed his actions were inadequate and ineffective. He resolved to create a deeper, impactful response of some sort, even after the initial incidents.

He discussed these incidents with a few close colleagues who agreed that the issues were important enough to be raised at the weekly school staff meeting. It became apparent from the emerging discussion that other teachers had encountered similar incidents.

The staff shared ideas and worked together to agree upon a united plan of action. The decision was made to specifically address these issues within the whole school’s Wellbeing health programme. In weekly cross-age groupings, students learned about qualities such as respect, empathy, perspective taking and responsibility, all of which are central to developing ICU. Students explored and discussed what these qualities looked like, felt like and sounded like and then produced artwork that represented these qualities and that was displayed in the school. Thereafter, when negative comments or cultural incidents occurred teachers engaged in discussion with students and often referred to the artwork as a prompt to remind them of the important qualities and values that the school community had agreed were necessary to nurture positive, respectful human relationships. The whole-school focus on the complexity of the discourses of race, identity and belonging enabled the staff to work together to create the circumstances in which the relationships of ICU can take place.

Discussion

In all three vignettes the leaders developed multi-faceted approaches that were aimed at impacting the whole school. The principal (Case 1) strived to establish a shared understanding of ICE. Beginning with the entire school staff was the starting point for establishing core beliefs and understandings about ICE, which was further shared with the students and parents and the broader school community. The Head of Curriculum (Case 2) strategically reviewed school programmes, policies and the national curriculum and worked together with School leadership and teachers to ensure that the school’s aims aligned with the intercultural imperatives and that ICE became genuinely embedded into the school curriculum across disciplines. Teachers from all disciplines and year levels (Case 3) collaborated and supported one another in developing a strategic approach to extend knowledge and develop the intercultural capacities for students and teachers, particularly in relation to responding to issues of racism.

Furthermore, the cases also demonstrate that activity at the local level in the school context is just as important as mandates at the policy level. Though the scenarios in the vignettes were quite disparate, involving leadership and issues arising in different parts of the school, the interrogation of these vignettes revealed common, core features; local leadership of processes designed to meet unique, local needs and a distinct focus upon building teacher capacity through collaborative learning.

Local leadership, processes and solutions

In each of the cases the need for change arose in relation to policy expectations and problems or issues encountered in everyday school practices. Each school leader made a conscious decision to take responsibility in leading and designing a process to be enacted in relation to the issue at hand in their school’s context. The principal was committed to embedding ICE in the school by initially supporting staff in understanding what it is and what it means. The beginning point for her was to identify their existing understanding of ICE. Deciding that the teachers and staff would benefit from opportunities to build upon their intercultural capabilities she developed an approach that involved them in individual and group reflection and discussion and a collection of collaborative learning experiences to enrich their ICU.

The Head of Curriculum was determined to lead in ensuring that ICE was embedded in every subject of the curriculum across the entire school. The starting point for her was to identify the existing documentation, programmes and practices in place to consider and evaluate current practice in relation to new policy mandates. From there she developed a strategic process of professional learning, which reached the entire school staff and re-positioned ICE as a quotidian focus. The teacher (Case 3.) was resolute in his search to identify ways to better respond to racially sensitive issues. The beginning point for him was to be both cognisant and identify and name incidents of racism that were occurring in the everyday school context and were at risk of being accepted and normalised without inhibition. By sharing his concerns with his colleagues, together, under his leadership, they were able to develop and agree an approach to adopt to address racism amongst students.

Building capacity through teachers’ learning

Previous research has found that that one-off, single workshops alone are insufficient for fostering intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2009). Short-term professional learning experiences may increase knowledge but do not necessarily promote respect for cultural diversity, positive attitudes or behaviour, or develop the skills to work with diverse students (Cotton, 1993; Greco et al., 2010; MacNaughton and Hughes, 2007). For these reasons, Hewstone and Cairns (2001) described ICE as more effective when delivered over an extended period. In this research we designed a longitudinal approach to the development of ICU and skills.

In our study there was a strong focus on changing community understanding in the schools, with a focus on building capacity through teachers’ professional learning. Survey data from the larger study identified a shift in staff views on interculturality from tokenistic, views of multiculturalism, which emphasised culture and difference, towards an intercultural perspective based on respecting cultures and learning to respect, communicate and interact effectively with others. Furthermore, as revealed in teacher focus groups in the larger study, staff began to initiate these discussions with colleagues as a part of their everyday practice (Halse et al., 2016).

In Case 2, the Head of Curriculum developed a strategic multi-level process as a vehicle to whole-school curricular change whereby she ensured staff were aware of the role of ICE in the curriculum and school practices, beginning with the Principal and Senior leadership staff, then the Discipline Coordinators and teachers. Her work with the staff was on-going and context based and the focus upon ICE became part of the curriculum and everyday practice.

Although, less obvious than the explicit forms of professional learning that were described in the first 2 cases, by gathering the teaching staff and identifying cross-cultural relationships and tensions amongst students, the teacher, in Case 3, facilitated a series of discussions and planning meetings that provided opportunities for collaborative learning where teachers learned with and from one another’s experiences, ideas and views. This led to the development of a whole-school strategy that was developed to strengthen and unify their school’s approach to forms of ICE that students could relate to.

Another finding from the larger study was that ‘Intercultural capabilities are fostered in reflexive learning environments’ (Halse et al., 2016:12). When teachers and school leaders were reflexive and keen to improve their personal intercultural knowledge and capabilities, recognising their school as the context for intercultural learning at all levels, schools made greater progress in becoming interculturally capable (Halse et al., 2016). Respecting and engaging with different cultures, through sharing stories, understanding one another, negotiating conflicting spaces and finding ways of getting along was an on-going process that enabled teachers to move beyond superficial celebrations (Cloonan et al., 2014:87).

Research findings from the larger study found that ‘principals’ and teachers’ beliefs impacted on the approach to intercultural learning in schools’ (Halse et al., 2016:10). Interviews with school leaders in the broader research project revealed that they saw their commitment to ICE as key to initiating a process of redesign and change in their school – the beginning of a process that related to every aspect of school life (Halse et al., 2016). They did not view it as additional, but an important and necessary part of what they were doing.

The first case illustrated how a principal began the process of embedding ICE in their school with a focus upon establishing shared understandings through principal leadership and collaborative learning amongst teachers. The principal’s commitment to ICE made the greatest difference to outcomes in schools – not because the development of teacher capacity was unimportant – but because teacher capacity was mostly improved where the principals provided strong and committed leadership (Halse et al., 2016).

One of the major findings from the larger longitudinal study reported here was that ‘a whole school approach is most effective in improving intercultural capabilities’ (Halse et al., 2016: 12). Schools in the study that adopted a multi-faceted, approach across all aspects of school life showed stronger development of intercultural capabilities than schools that restricted their focus to a single discipline and/or school grade. This required engagement at various levels of the school setting (principal, curriculum, teacher, student, community), all contributing to the common goal of building ICE.

A recent large-scale Australian study (DEECD) ¹ concluded that an effective way to promote ICU in schools was to adopt a multilevel approach rather than through single events or units of curriculum. They also found increasing the personal and professional capacity of staff to engage in reflexive thinking to cultural diversity as well as to foster positive interpersonal relationships was important (DEECD, 2012).

Overall, the larger study found that principals were shown to ‘make a difference’ by ‘focusing upon developing people, setting school directions and redesigning the operation of their school’ (Halse et al., 2016: 11). Leadership towards an intercultural approach encouraged all staff and students as part of a programme of curriculum redesign, professional and student learning, and reflexive redevelopment.

Conclusions

Formal policy and curricula often provide limited guidance about how school leaders ought to proceed: even an analysis of 30 European level policy documents revealed that all failed to specify how schools could promote citizenship and social cohesion amongst diverse students (Faas et al., 2014).

This article has discussed the ways in which education leaders at different levels in schools (principals, curriculum leaders and teachers) have strived to build intercultural knowledge and skills and expertise of teaching staff in their schools. With Australia now adopting the same imperative as many European countries to build capacity in ICE and to maintain and sustain it, the global shift to building capacity in ICE has become a priority, leaving schools wondering how to articulate this in practice (Charles et al., 2016; Cloonan et al., 2014; Halse et al., 2016).

A successful ICE programme is embedded in broader school practices and ethos (evident in the formal and informal curriculum) and in the words, actions and interactions of the principal, teachers and students and reflected throughout the everyday practices of the school. Through the analysis of the vignettes, we argue that a multi-faceted approach to ICE can be effective in schools, demonstrating practical ways in which schools can make changes at the principal, curriculum and teacher level. We have shown how ICE can be planned for and enacted in the everyday nuances of schools from interactions within the classroom, schoolyard and beyond, involving the enactment of multiple players.

The three vignettes in this paper capture a very narrow spectrum of the intercultural issues that arise in schools, but we have elucidated the need to build teacher capacity, to enhance curriculum and to avoid and address problematic cultural issues that might arise. School communities that are culturally diverse are confronted daily with circumstances and experiences that require people to draw upon their intercultural capabilities. The act of teachers and leaders working with their students and focusing on these issues enables them to begin to understand the complexity of what it might be to work interculturally, to work towards understanding the complexity of our multiple identities and languages. Developing ICE may be complex and fraught with challenges, but schools can take responsibility for developing their own processes, protocols and practices for their unique educational context and school community in order to ensure that ICU becomes a genuine part of their school culture and everyday practice.