Australia, Multicultural Education in

Multicultural education has been a feature of Australian educational policies, programs, and debates for 4 decades. The education of two generations of students has been influenced by multicultural approaches reflecting changing educational priorities and responses to international and national economic and political trends, against a background of increasing diversity in the nation's population resulting from migration.

This entry first briefly reviews the impact of postwar immigration on both the school system and the wider society, as the institutionalized commitment to assimilation prior to the 1970s gave way to a focus on multicultural education. It then describes the evolution of multicultural education as it began by broadening opportunities for migrant students to learn both English and the languages of their home communities. Today, multicultural education in Australia ...

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