Multicultural education in Australia: Two generations of evolution

Abstract

Australia is a nation of immigrants, with nearly one-quarter of its population born overseas while a further quarter, who were born in Australia, have at least one immigrant parent. Developing educational responses for this substantial number of immigrants and their children has involved major changes in Australia’s educational institutions. This chapter outlines the changes and highlights how changes in Australian society and the international arena play a major part in that process of educational innovation.1 In less than 50 years Australia has moved from being a society which expected immigrants to assimilate rapidly to one which, along with Canada, officially adopted multiculturalism as the model guiding policies relating to the incorporation of immigrant minorities and their children. Education was one of the main institutional areas which underwent significant changes as assimilation was replaced by a suite of responses which together constitute what in Australia is identified as multicultural education. Educational responses to diversity are, however, rarely static, and this chapter also traces how new developments since the 1980s have extended Australia’s responses.