Negotiating Studies of Asia in Years One and Two: Collaboration in the Production and use of Knowledge

Abstract

Over the past three years teachers at Mercia Primary School (Geelong) have engaged in a research project aiming to extend teachers’ and students’ understandings of Indonesia; limitations in curriculum resources forced a broader focus on ‘Asia’. Motivated by a whole school research project positioned within the context of government policies to ensure Australians are Asia literate’, the teachers used action research to guide their curriculum work. The teachers were seeking ways to explore with their students the changing relations between Australia and Asia in order to improve their students’ understandings of changing global interdependencies. The research efforts of these teachers were supported by links with university-based researchers. In this paper, four members of this collaborative team describe the action process, showing how it guided the negotiation of teaching and learning about Asia, and how it informed participants’ understandings of the possibilities for and limitations of developing a postcolonial pedagogy.