September 30th 2009

Australia has a dual history, geographies of multiple languages and a culture of multiple heritages.

With debate now raging on a national curriculum for schools, is it time to question whether educational paradigms inherited from the past will fully prepare and serve future generations?

This public lecture confronts the issues and opportunities we must consider for Australia to be a widely literate and progressive multicultural nation. Drawing on research into indigenous and other non-mainstream communities, questions of curriculum, educational philosophy, relevance of what is taught and the very structure of schools will be explored and new possibilities suggested for consideration.

Professor Rosemary Johnston

Rosemary Johnston is Head of Education at UTS and Founding Director of the UTS Centre for Child and Youth Culture and Wellbeing. Currently she is establishing the Centre's interdisciplinary project, Literate Australia, which overarches cell projects with specific outcomes relating to the education, culture and wellbeing of children and youth. She is also leading the ARC project, New Ways of Doing School: Mixing story and technology to generate innovative learning, social and cultural communities.

Introduced by

Peter Freebody, Professorial Research Fellow, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, literacy researcher and advisor to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority on the National English Curriculum

Resources

• flyer (PDF 438k)
• audio recording (MP3 31 MB)

UTSPEAKS: is a free public lecture series presented by UTS experts discussing a range of important issues confronting contemporary Australia