Teaching Heritage - Integrating Multicultural Perpsectives

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	How can we formulate historical questions that lead to more integrated ways of thinking about issues? Rather than separating ethnic issues and asking specific ethnic-related questions, how can investigations be approached in a way that draws on the perspectives of various ethnic groups?

	Integrating perspectives is an attempt to overcome bias in viewing situations and drawing conclusions. Bias develops when we take a narrow look at a particular topic. Analysing problems and issues from a range of viewpoints is the main objective in working with perspectives.

	So, how do we gather evidence of the diversity of views held by a range of cultural groups in relation to developments such as post-war immigration? Much of what marginalised groups thought, felt and did – expressed from their particular viewpoints – went unrecorded in the past. It naturally follows that much of recorded history is biased.

	Analysis focusing on perspectives, then, requires us to integrate current knowledge and awareness of situations involving marginalised groups – the voices generally unrepresented in the media and public life – in contemporary society.


	Several inquiry questions in the History syllabus focus on political processes between the wars. Crucial to understanding processes is to look at those included and those excluded from disucssions.

The questions we ask are a key to accessing perspectives. Questions initiating an inquiry reflect the outlook (or perspective) on the investigation – signalling the likely direction an investigation will take.

Questions that focus on who was involved – and how the representative groups benefited from participation – can illuminate our understandings of the power cultural and ethnic groups bring to Australian politics today.

How and why did Australia’s patterns of migration change?
Analysing this topic in relation to cultural groups evokes a key question: Who was involved in political discussions and decisions to change immigration policies? For example, who contributed to the immigration debates, who attended the conferences and meetings, who was represented in the groups that were entitled to migrate to Australia during this period? Furthering the inquiry, we could ask, What were participant groups trying to achieve? For example, what did those in attendance contribute or say, what roles did they perform, what benefits did their group receive as a result of their involvement? And leading to the syllabus related question: How and why certain outcomes occurred in the immigration debate?

Ultimately, citizenship learning that assists students to work within current social and political systems will focus on how the processes that lead to changes in immigration worked to the advantage of certain groups and the disadvantage of others.

Click the icon to listen to various points of views

Another approach to integrating the perspectives of cultural groups is to ask people of different groups how they view a particular issue. Go to the discussion forum to hear a range of perspectives – including gender, Aboriginal, cultural, socioeconomic – on the meanings and practices associated with heritage. Helen Armstrong gives an account of the way cultural beliefs and practices lead to identification with places that give rise to a public profile for communities. Considering multicultural perspectives, however, we need to ask whether the political views of different cultural groups are as widely disseminated as social and cultural aspects.