Race ethnicity and education, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1195357

Whiteness and national identity: teacher discourses in Australian primary schools

Jessica Waltona  , Naomi Priestb, Emma Kowala, Fiona Whitec, Brandi Foxd and Yin Paradiesa

aalfred deakin institute for citizenship and Globalisation, deakin university, Melbourne, australia; banu centre for Social Research and Methods, the australian national university, acton, australia; cSchool of Psychology, university of Sydney, Sydney, australia; dcentre for Research in educational Futures and innovation, deakin university, Melbourne, australia

ABSTRACTThe study examines how white teachers talked to children about national identity and cultural diversity by drawing on qualitative research with eight- to 12-year-old students and their teachers from four Australian primary schools with different racial, ethnic and cultural demographics. Despite a range of explicit and implicit approaches that fostered different levels of critique among students, teachers often communicated Australian national identity as commensurate to white racial and Anglo-Australian cultural identity. We identified three main approaches teachers used to talk about national identity and cultural diversity: cultural essentialism, race elision and a quasi-critical approach. We conclude that the wider education system needs to develop a more formal curriculum structure that guides teachers in developing a better awareness of the power of white normativity, and to critically and explicitly counter discourse and practice that centres whiteness as foundational to dominant conceptualisations of national identity.

Introduction

Although high levels of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity exist within many nation-states around the world, strong conservative nationalist sentiments and myopic conceptualisations of national identity persist. This is in spite of government policies that claim to uphold the benefits of diversity and support multiple identities in a socially inclusive society (Stratton 1998; Wotherspoon and Jungbluth 1995). The problem, as Eriksen (2010) notes, is a tendency to equate nation with race, ethnicity and culture as if they are inherent rather than arbitrary characteristics of national identity. This is common to many countries including former British colonies such as Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand (Stratton and Ang 1994).

In Australia, since federation in 1901 and through subsequent government policies particularly relating to education and immigration, national identity explicitly centred on being white and Anglo (Carey and McLisky 2009; Curthoys 2009). This imagining of Australian identity as white and Anglo1 is socially and historically constructed and has been critiqued for being deployed as a natural priv-ileged position that must be upheld (Ang and Stratton 1998; Forrest and Dunn 2006). Drawing on

© 2016 informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDSnational identity; whiteness; cultural essentialism; race elision; quasi-critical; children; teacher

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 14 december 2014 accepted 27 March 2016

CONTACT Jessica Walton jessica.walton@deakin.edu.au

2 J. WAlToN ET Al.

Anderson’s (2006) seminal work on the nation-state as an imagined space and place, Stratton and Ang (1994, 141) outline how Anglo identity, along with ‘the discourse of race, was used to mark the limits of the Australian imagined community, not distinctions within it’. On these grounds, national identity was conceptualised as comprising a single imagined cultural origin that was homogenous and coterminous with race.

Since the 1970s with the end of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, or as it is commonly known, the ‘White Australia Policy’, Australia has adopted a new strategy of multiculturalism. From its early beginnings the re-imagining of Australian national identity as multicultural has emerged as an exercise in nation building (Stratton and Ang 1994). However, despite an official mandate sup-porting multiculturalism, the political shift from a white Australia to a multicultural Australia has not coincided with shedding a dominant cultural imaginary of Australia’s so-called ‘core’ foundation as white and Anglo. In fact, conservative2 (politically right-wing) interpretations of multicultural-ism have reinforced this Anglo ‘core’ in the midst of cultural diversity. This is evident across many sectors but particularly in recent debates about the content of the new Australian Curriculum (AC) (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA]) 2015)3. The AC represents the first time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures are included as a required cross-curriculum priority for primary and secondary schools. However, a recent review by federally appointed conservative academics concluded that including this priority has resulted in ‘consequently downplaying other aspects of what should be core content’ (Australian Government 2014, 138). They specified what they meant by this ‘core content’:

The aspect mentioned most often is the importance of Western traditions and knowledge. Another is the Judeo-Christian heritage of Australia. The fear is that to emphasise Asia and Indigenous cultural [sic] and knowledge means that the key elements of Australia’s foundation and knowledge base are being neglected (Australian Government 2014, 138).

The claim that ‘Western traditions and knowledge’ and a ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage are ‘under threat’ was a claim previously made by the conservative Howard government in relation to multiculturalism (Forrest and Dunn 2006). Using similar language, the National Multicultural Advisory Council advisory council produced a report that outlined what was called ‘Australian multiculturalism’, which effectively ‘accord[ed] a privileged status to Anglo-Australians within multicultural history and identity’ (Forrest and Dunn 2006, 209).

In Australia, there is no national multicultural education curriculum. Instead, there are state-based curriculum development guidelines such as the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) and the aims of national multiculturalism policy, which have a focus on education. VELS (Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority [VCAA]) 2013) incorporates national ‘Statements of Learning’ (National Assessment Program [NAP] 2013) according to different domains (e.g., interpersonal devel-opment, civics and citizenship, arts, math, science) along with six standardised levels to assess student outcomes from Prep4 to Year 10. VELS also includes a few sample curriculum units for each domain but these are not mandatory. Therefore, teachers, including those discussed in this present study, have to design curriculum units without a structured curriculum to support critical discussions about multiculturalism. In a recent research report on teachers’ perspectives of multiculturalism education issues in 14 Australian primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, Watkins and Noble (2014, 16) found that teachers ‘often relied on limited forms of cultural recognition associated with earlier policies of multiculturalism [in the 1970s]’. These earlier policies tended to recognise culture in ways that essentialised cultures as static and defined as discrete entities. Although multicultural-ism policy has shifted slightly over the years (see Jakubowicz 2006; Koleth 2010; and Shen 2008 for a detailed account and analysis of policy changes), cultural diversity is still viewed as ‘other’ coming from ‘ elsewhere’ (i.e., ‘other’ than Britain), which is accepted as long as it operates within a socially cohesive ‘Australian society’ that leaves white normativity unexamined and unchallenged. This lack of critical examination at a national policy level and the lack of a critical multicultural education curriculum are reflected in the teachers’ approaches to national identity and cultural diversity, which are the focus of this article.

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 3

Overall, although there have been significant steps toward reconceptualising Australia as a mul-ticultural country with a strong Indigenous history, a privileged Anglo culture continues to act as a barometer by which other cultures are judged precisely because of its dominant positioning as the ‘core’ culture to which ‘ethnic others’ must assimilate (Forrest and Dunn 2006). We argue that this policy shift towards multiculturalism has occurred without systematically grappling with whiteness, and continues to reproduce and reinforce the privileged position of a white Anglo identity as the foundation for an imagined Australian national identity.

Some have argued that because the nation-state is founded on homogenising diversity and privileging a single language and culture, a diverse view of national identity is not possible despite multicultural claims to ‘unity-in-diversity’ (Stratton and Ang 1994). On these grounds, it would seem that national identity is inherently assimilationist and homogenous due to its central role in the nation-building process (Forrest and Dunn 2006; Hage 2012). This form of ethno-nationalism has been contrasted with other types of nationalism such as civic nationalism, which focuses more on a ‘commitment to a common destiny and government through shared civic institutions and the rule of law … [and as such] is a relatively inclusionary form of nationalism [whereas] ethno-nationalism is relatively exclu-sionary’ (Fozdar, Spittles, and Hartley 2015, 321). In response to ethno-nationalism, some scholars have proposed a move toward ‘post-nationalism’ by arguing not so much for the irrelevance of the nation-state but to analyse how ‘[it] is being relegated as an effective political institution by processes of globalisation, and that national identity is being outstripped and displaced by the rise of alternative forms of identity’. These ‘alternative forms’ may result from an ‘increasing pluralisation of identity and affiliation from within, through the assertion of minority national and ethnic affiliations, and without, that is, through immigration and the diversification of populations’ (Breen and O’Neill 2010, 3).

However, Breen and O’Neill (2010, 5) also argue that research needs to examine why despite these pluralised identities, national identity and the ‘enduring appeal of nationalism’ remain. Similarly, others such as Moran (2011) have argued that it is not productive to simply dismiss national identity as passé or as inherently detrimental to multiculturalism because of its conservative association with cultural homogeneity. Given that it may not be possible for national identity to be ‘superseded’ while the nation-state endures, Moran argues that this representation of Australian national identity is only one, albeit dominant, interpretation that can and should be contested. This supports the point reiterated by May (1999, 19) that it is crucial to challenge the ‘idea of an homogenous common culture’ as a form of ‘national myth-making’. Rather than the impractical goal of dismissing national identity; Moran (2011, 2168) argues that it is critical that research engages with how people conceptualise national identity in order to challenge conservative constructions and promote ‘an open, inclusive, self-reflective national identity [that] can support multiculturalism and its values’. Such research should consider how different groups of Australians define who is Australian, what it means to be Australian, and how this is represented in a diverse society.

While we agree with Moran (2011)’s premise that it is possible for national identity to be understood in more inclusive and reflective ways (aka civic nationalism), we also concur with May (1999) and other critical whiteness scholars that the dominance of whiteness needs to be made visible as socially constructed in order to counter cultural essentialism as the basis for national identity, thereby chal-lenging its hold on an imagined national identity. Furthermore, ‘inclusion’ can also be used to exclude, especially when constructed boundaries of who is included or who needs to be included are not crit-ically examined (Ahmed 2012). In this article, we draw on whiteness theory (Delgado and Stefancic 2001; Dyer 1997; Frankenberg 1993; Hage 2012; Stratton 1998) to argue that the dominant representa-tion of Australian national identity as white and Anglo must be acknowledged in order to examine how the normalisation of whiteness continues to exclude as well as privilege particular groups of people along racial, ethnic and cultural lines.

Specifically, we examine these issues of whiteness in the context of Australian primary school classrooms by focusing on how children learn about cultural diversity and national identity from their teachers. Childhood is a foundational period for identity and its development (Barrett 2000). As such, there is significant sociological research about how children conceptualise and experience these

4 J. WAlToN ET Al.

identities in different social contexts, such as schools (e.g., Carrington and Short 1995; Mcleod and Yates 2003; Waldron and Pike 2006). There are also numerous studies that examine how dominant representations of identity are maintained through social institutions, particularly in education and among white teachers (e.g., Castagno 2008; Mazzei 2008; McIntyre 1997; Picower 2009). For instance, McIntyre (1997) examined ‘white talk’ among white pre-service teachers to understand how they con-ceptualise whiteness. Picower (2009, 206) examined ‘tools of whiteness’ that white female pre-service teachers used in a multicultural education course to actively ‘protect their hegemonic stories’. These studies critically address a need to understand how teachers, who are predominantly white (Santoro, Reid, and Kamler 2001; Sleeter 2001), sometimes unknowingly and/or unintentionally, enable the central positioning of whiteness in the classroom.

This article builds on these studies by examining not only how whiteness is taught from an early age in classroom settings but also analysing how primary schools are currently grappling with tensions between an uncritical history of whiteness as a legacy of British colonisation, exemplified by the ‘White Australia Policy’, and a turn to multiculturalism over the last 40 years, albeit a multiculturalism that has not left its ‘White Australia’ racial and cultural moorings. Based primarily on classroom discussions among eight- to 12-year-old children from both racial/ethnic minority and majority backgrounds,5 this article details how white normativity is reinforced through both teachers’ lack of critical engagement with issues raised in the classroom and essentialising approaches to cultural diversity and national identity.

Study background

This article focuses on four primary schools in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. It draws on a larger study conducted from 2011 to 2012 that aimed to understand how children in Years 3–6 learn about and discuss racial, ethnic and cultural diversity as well as the types of ethnic-racial socialisation messages and strategies their teachers use with them. Here, ethnic-racial socialisation refers to pro-cesses by which adults transmit implicit (e.g., non-verbal) and explicit (e.g., verbal) messages about the social significance of race, ethnicity and culture to children (Hughes, Rodriguez, and Smith 2006; Lesane-Brown 2006; Priest et al. 2014a).

Each school in the overall study was selected to include different proportions of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity and varying socioeconomic status. Other factors were also considered such as geo-graphical location and the level of classroom engagement with multicultural issues. Refer to Table 1 for demographic characteristics of each of the schools. In the classrooms observed, all teachers were from white Australian backgrounds, which reflects the overall racial demographic of Australian teachers (Santoro, Reid, and Kamler 2001).

Table 1. School demographic characteristics (pseudonyms used for schools).

note: *this information is from the MySchool website, an online database with australian school profiles managed by the australian curriculum, assessment and Reporting authority (acaRa). the data presented here is from 2011–2012, which coincides with when the data collection was conducted.

Geographical location

Socioeconomic status Ethnic diversity

language back-ground other than English*

clarewood Primary School (cPS)

outer suburb Low to mid Mainly anglo, white european, Middle eastern, Pacific islander, Sudanese, South and South east asian back-grounds.

51%

high Flats Primary School (hFPS)

inner suburb high Mainly anglo, white european and east asian backgrounds.

19%

Lynvale Primary School (LPS)

outer suburb Mid to high Mainly anglo, and white european backgrounds.

3%

Middleburn Primary School (MPS)

inner suburb Low Mainly east african backgrounds. 100%

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 5

This article draws primarily on classroom observations and is supported by key informant inter-views as well as student and teacher focus groups. Ethics approval was received from the University of Melbourne [HREC #1238446] and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Research Department [2011_001164]. All participants provided informed consent. All names and identify-ing details of schools and individuals have been changed to ensure anonymity. Interviews with key informants such as teachers and community engagement staff were conducted by a researcher using a semi-structured interview that included questions about the school and community’s racial, ethnic and cultural diversity, and school support for and approaches toward topics about racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. Focus groups were conducted separately with students and teachers, and included questions about students’ cultural identity, sources for learning about cultural diversity, and a set of four intercultural scenarios designed to elicit ethnic-racial socialisation messages and strategies. Classroom observations were conducted by at least two researchers in each school over a one-month period. Each school was visited five to nine times to observe classroom lessons about diversity for a total of 45 hours across both schools. A structured guide was used to document verbal and non-verbal interactions between teachers and students and amongst students.

All data were thematically coded using NVivo software with pre-determined categories as well as codes developed inductively. Comparative analysis was used to determine patterns within and across schools. Due to the potential identifiability of these schools, specific information such as exact geographic location and individual teacher background, including age and length of time employed at the school, are not detailed.

Findings

The study aims to examine how children learn about and talk about cultural diversity with their teachers in classroom settings. However, we found that in the process of discussing cultural diversity, racism and questions about Australian national identity were also raised. Throughout these discussions, whiteness was continually normalised in implicit and explicit ways. Responding to these findings, we focus here on how national identity and cultural diversity were discussed across the four schools and how the unexamined issue of whiteness served to reinforce dominant conceptualisations of Australian national identity as white and Anglo. The following sections compare and contrast three different approaches to whiteness that teachers used: cultural essentialism, race elision and a quasi-critical approach. For each of these approaches, the association between Australian national identity and white Anglo origins remained fundamentally unchallenged.

A cultural essentialism approach to national identity

This section focuses on cultural essentialism as a key approach used to talk about national identity and cultural diversity. A cultural essentialism approach sees cultures as inherently different, bounded and mutually exclusive. In practice, this approach celebrates Australia’s cultural diversity by equating cultural identity with an assumed national origin that exists ‘elsewhere’ outside of Australia. Although white normativity was reinforced to different degrees across all four schools, the teacher at CPS used a cultural essentialism approach to talk about national identity whereas teachers at the other three schools primarily used either a race elision approach or a quasi-critical approach. At CPS, just over half of the students (51%) at the school spoke a language other than English at home. As described in the examples below, the teacher’s approach to this diversity was to equate racial difference with static notions of cultural difference, including language, food and clothing.

At CPS, a Cultural Studies unit was developed in response to the growing diversity of students from minority ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, particularly from Sudan and South and Southeast Asian countries. Since 2006, the unit had focused on the cultural traditions, holidays, food, dress and material culture of countries. Helen, the teacher who introduced the unit, explained that she hoped it would ‘break down a bit of a barrier [between the students] and to try and make everybody

6 J. WAlToN ET Al.

feel comfortable’ (CPS Helen, 16/12/11). Despite good intentions, the approach used to teach about national identity was mainly cultural essentialism. At CPS, we observed eight one-hour class lessons that focused primarily on Australia. The Cultural Studies lessons were taught by Gayle, an Anglo-Australian teacher. The topics centred on Australian clothing, slang and cultural identity.

For the first lesson on Australian culture, Gayle explained to her Year 4 class that they would be talking about Australian clothing and their task would be to draw someone wearing clothing typical of Australian culture. As an example, she used a picture of an Anglo-Australian ‘bushman’ wearing an Akubra hat to represent Australian national identity. A bushman is a romanticised symbol of Australian nationalism, representing mateship and perseverance (Moran 2011). The Akubra hat is associated with the Australian bush as it was typically worn by working men in rural areas, especially farmers and stockmen. Some students did not immediately accept this particular visual representation of Australian identity. One student said, ‘Miss, that looks like a Mexican person’ to which Gayle replied, ‘It is not. Can anyone think of another national costume? What about India and saris?’ (CPS Year 4 Class A, 8/11/11) The students did not reply to Gayle’s prompt. Although the lesson was ostensibly about Australian cultural identity, the intersection with national identity was apparent. Her approach clearly presents Australian national identity as if it is synonymous with a particular representation of a male working-class Anglo-Australian identity.

Despite using reified cultural representations of Australian national identity, Gayle insisted that everyone is Australian no matter where they are from. For the activity on Australian national identity, she asked the students to write, ‘I am Australian’ in their journals and then to describe what it means to be Australian, things that they do that are Australian as well as their cultural background. Here, she separated being ‘Australian’ from having a ‘cultural background’, serving to reinforce the invisibility of Anglo culture and whiteness in constructing dominant forms of national identity (Dyer 1997; Frankenberg 2001). She gave examples of Australian ‘cultural things’ such as ‘You go to the beach or you eat Australian food: meat pies, lamingtons … or you talk a certain way. You say, ‘G’day’ (CPS Year 4 Class B, 21/11/11). In this discussion, Gayle essentialised Australian national identity by attaching stereotypical cultural forms and activities.

Despite ‘good intentions’ (Riggs 2004), Gayle’s examples of Australian identity were exclusively associated with white (and male) Anglo stereotypes of Australian identity. This dominant representa-tion of national identity is often conflated with racial, ethnic and cultural identity, so that certain characteristics like skin colour, shared language/accent and cultural practices are linked to ‘genuine Australianness’. By dictating the terms that delineate who counts as ‘Australian’ based on hegemonic representations of Australian national identity, unequal power relations are maintained that continue to include some while excluding others. As Fozdar and Spittles (2010) argue, being a ‘good citizen’ is associated with a commitment to an Anglo patriotic orientation toward Australian national identity rather than acknowledging multiple ways of being Australian.

These classroom discussions (among others) were personally challenging for the researchers to observe due to the homogenising and essentialising approaches used with the students and attempts were made to talk with Gayle after the class finished to gauge her reasons for using those particular approaches and activities. The belief that these approaches were appropriate and inclusive was reiterated in an individual teacher interview. Gayle explained that she wanted to communicate to the students that they are Australian in addition to having different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. She said, ‘I thought it was important to sort of try and acknowledge that they are Australian because a lot of these kids here spend so much time talking about their own culture and they don’t recognise that actually, “I am Australian”’ (CPS Gayle, 24/11/11). This approach is likely informed by the focus on cultural recognition in Australian multiculturalism policy, which acknowledges that people may have different cultural backgrounds but that they are also Australian. This unproblematically assumes that everyone will be accepted as Australian and will want to identify as Australian. Gayle felt that it was a problem that children mainly talked about ‘their own culture’ because she felt that it meant they did not also identify as Australian. Instead of talking about reasons why they might not identify as Australian (e.g., barriers such as experiences of racism) and examining what ‘Australian’ means to the children,

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 7

the children were simply expected to say they were Australian. Furthermore, the add-on approach to identity as ‘Australian’ and ‘cultural other’ limits and underestimates the complexity through which people view themselves and relate to each other.

A race elision approach to national identity

A race elision approach was mainly used at HFPS and in one of the classes at LPS (Class A). This approach tends to avoid discussions about race and racial, ethnic and cultural difference, thus avoiding critical discussions about whiteness and the powerful association between Australian national identity and a normative white Anglo identity. This ascribes to national rhetoric in multiculturalism policy that recognises Australia’s cultural diversity mainly in terms of its social and economic benefits of diversity with a strong focus on everyone being Australian and everyone being equal despite cultural differ-ences. While seemingly benign, this neglects the discrimination people from different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds face on an everyday basis and the social inequalities that this discrimination perpetuates. Although a race elision approach differs from a cultural essentialism approach in several aspects, both approaches continue to centre white Anglo identity as ‘core’ to an Australian national identity. At LPS, two Year 5/6 classrooms (Class A and B) were each observed on five occasions for a total of nine hours. This race elision section focuses on LPS (Class A) and HFPS.

At HFPS, Year 4 classroom observations were conducted during a five-day unit on Aboriginal cultures. Susan, an Aboriginal Elder, taught several of these sessions. In one session, the students were shown a DVD about ‘What it means to be Australian’, featuring a young Aboriginal man from Susan’s community. Afterwards, the Anglo-Australian teacher, Karen, prompted discussion by com-menting, ‘Look around us. There is a lot of difference in this room but we are all Australian’. One student countered and said, ‘Some of us are Italian’ to which another student asked, ‘We are not all Australian, are we?’ A third student reflected, ‘We all are in a way’. Previously, the students had been learning about qualities and attitudes of leaders as part of the curriculum focus on fostering a global outlook. The students used these characteristics to describe what it means to be uniquely Australian, including: ‘honest, empathetic, sharing, caring, respectful, balanced and creative’. Karen reinforced this saying, ‘[Those are] a lot of our Primary Years Programme (PYP)6 attitudes’. Other students then added, ‘tolerant, friendly, open-minded, independent’.

One student challenged these responses, ‘For example, if you are born in Russia and are caring, that doesn’t make you Australian’. The student suggested that to be Australian is ‘to have an Aboriginal ancestor or if you were born in Australia’. Other students added to have ‘Australian blood’ or an ‘Australian accent’ is to be Australian. Karen only engaged these comments by saying, ‘We are all an international people with ties to many different cultures’. She did not engage in a critical manner with the other students’ comments about ‘Australian blood’ and ‘Australian accent’. Instead, it was clear that the teacher was advocating the school’s International Baccalaureate curriculum that emphasises individual qualities with a focus on sameness regardless of difference as a way of fostering acceptance (Walton et al. 2014). This focus in the curriculum played a role in the teachers’ race elision approach. Additionally, the student demographic is from a high socioeconomic background, which further reinforces the idea that everyone is ‘equal’ or on an equal playing field and should be treated simply as ‘individuals’. Although there are students from other racial, ethnic or cultural backgrounds, primarily East Asian, issues of racism between students were not discussed (Walton et al. 2014).

During Class A observations at LPS, students tried to engage further about who is considered to be Australian by drawing attention to racial differences. However, similar to HFPS, there were missed opportunities when the teachers took a race elision approach. Although LPS (Class A) mainly used a race elision approach, there was also some evidence that the teachers were trying to critically talk about the social meaning of racial difference. Nevertheless, classroom discussions fell short of challenging white normative assumptions about who is Australian by avoiding explicit and critical discussion of students’ cultural essentialist comments and using a race elision approach.

8 J. WAlToN ET Al.

For one of the classroom lessons, the teachers told the students they would be viewing three Australian television advertisements and commercials from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (LPS Class A, 6/3/12). Before they played the advertisement, the teachers asked, ‘What sort of people might be living in Australia and watching this ad? Who was here? Who was not?’ For example, the students watched an advertisement from the 1990s about Harmony Day, a day dedicated to celebrating Australia’s cultural diversity. Although this was clearly not the intention of the advertisement, one of the students said that they thought the non-white people in the advertisement were tourists. In response to this one of the teachers, Rachel, asked, ‘Why do you think tourists? You’re not wrong. I’m just curious why you think that’. Rachel used a prompt that was meant to encourage the student to think of other possibilities and to keep the conversation open. However, in the context of a discussion about whiteness and race, this inadvertently supported the student’s white normative view. When the student did not continue with another explanation, Rachel allowed the conversation to continue and students, who were all from majority white backgrounds continued to ‘other’ the non-white people in the advertisement:

Student 1 – They are celebrating that there are people from different countries.

Student 2 – Shows that everyone belongs. It’s not just Australians. I think there were Indian people, and Japanese and black people.

Student 3 – It is the human race. It’s saying your race isn’t Chinese or whatever; it’s human.

Student 4 – If you come to Australia, we will accept you. (LPS Class A, 6/3/12)

During this interaction between the students, the cultural recognition and celebratory multiculturalism approach encouraged by Australian multiculturalism policy (Australian Government 2011) is reflected by the students’ comments that ‘everyone belongs’ and ‘celebrating … people from different countries’. However, white normativity is also apparent. For example, the comment that ‘… everyone belongs. It’s not just Australians’ still makes a distinction between people considered to be ‘Australian’, read as ‘white’, and those that are marked as ‘other’ than ‘white’. It also assumes that people in the advertise-ment who were not ‘white’ came from ‘different countries’ rather than considering the possibility that they could also be from Australia or, alternatively, that the white people in the advertisement may also be from other countries. The fourth student concludes that everyone is accepted in Australia when clearly anyone who is not white will always be considered a tourist. Here, students demonstrated that being ‘included’ is a form of non-belonging (Ahmed 2012). By making a point to include people from minority backgrounds, the students, who were all white, were marking them as people who needed to be included, thereby reinforcing the idea that they do not belong in the first place. This was something that Rachel noted was ‘not wrong’, thus implicitly reinforcing white normative assumptions. This teacher–student interaction represented an opportunity for the teacher to take a more quasi-critical approach by beginning to explore the white normativity implicit in the students’ comments. However, the discussion concluded with students drawing on Rachel’s race elision approach by saying everyone is human and implying race does not matter.

A quasi-critical approach to national identity

A quasi-critical approach strives to question and challenge whiteness but does so without explicitly addressing structural power inequalities that privilege whiteness as a dominant framework. In a school context, a quasi-critical approach may attempt to de-centre whiteness by opening up discussion that ‘Australian’ means having a white Anglo identity but does not engage in deeper discussion about why students might not readily identify as ‘Australian’. In this way, ‘Australian’ is still associated with a white Anglo identity. This approach is closer to challenging whiteness but it still does not take a wholly critical approach, which would challenge even the assumption that students should have to identify as Australian.

MPS also encouraged students to feel proud of their ethnic or cultural background in addition to identifying as Australian. At MPS, all but a few students had backgrounds from Horn of African

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 9

countries, predominantly Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Compared to CPS, the teachers at MPS took a much more critical approach to cultural diversity by considering barriers to belonging through classroom discussions about racism (Priest et al. 2014b). However, during classroom discussions about Australian identity, apart from one comment in a key informant interview, the link was not explicitly made between students’ reluctance to confidently say they are Australian and particular representations of Australian identity that exclude them from the outset.

In a lesson on cultural identity with Year 3 and 4 students (MPS 6/12/11), one of the teachers, Andrew, explained his cultural background as being partly European. He then opened the conversation by asking students, ‘Who feels completely Eritrean or Somalian? Who feels a bit of both [Australian and African]?’ rather than simply assuming they would identify as both. This differed from the way Gayle at CPS handled the students’ indifference toward identifying as Australian, which was simply to insist that they are Australian. However, while Andrew began to explore how identity is an inter-subjective process, not simply static and clearly defined (i.e., cultural essentialism), he could have also taken this further by combining discussions on racism together with facilitating discussion about white normative assumptions underlying Australian national identity.

Similarly, during a key informant interview, Maggie, a staff member responsible for community development and engagement, described an interaction she had with a student about identity. She recalled:

I said, ‘Well I was born in Australia’ … and [the student] said to me, ‘Well I was born in Australia but I’m not Australian,’ I said, ‘Oh, really, well why?’ [The student said] ‘Yeah I’m Somali.’ I said, ‘You know you can be two things.’ ‘No, I’m not, I’m not Australian, I’m Somali. I speak Somali at home. I’m Somali.’ I said, “’you can speak English as well, it doesn’t matter. … You’re born in Australia. You have an Australian birth certificate. You can be Australian.’ [The student replied], ‘Don’t want to, I’m Somali,’ and that really, really got me thinking having that conversation with her. (MPS Maggie 14/12/11)

She reflected that this student and other students’ reluctance to identify as Australian could be due to their experiences in the housing commission flats where they live, and where for ‘part of their experi-ence of white Australia, [it] is the junkies they live next door to. There’s a real perception of drug and alcohol abuse as being integral to Australian culture’. In this case, Maggie reasons that the student’s insistence on distancing herself from identifying as ‘Australian’ is affected by a negative perception of who represents an ‘Australian person’ within the vicinity of their home.

While the students’ perceptions of Australian culture may be influenced by where they live, Maggie’s sense of discomfort indicates that her white normative position was unsettled and de-centred by the student’s comment. The student’s insistence that she is Somali demonstrates resistance or opposition toward a particular interpretation of what it might mean to have a hybrid or even a dual identity as both Australian and Somali. A hybrid identity refers to the general idea that someone can have multiple identities that are dynamic and may shift depending on context (Kidd 2002). From a social psychological perspective, dual identity refers to an intergroup process through which ‘superordinate and subgroup identities are both salient’ (Dovidio et al. 2001, 179). For example, two ethnic groups may see themselves as separate but come together through a shared identity that is meaningful for both groups while still identifying with their particular ethnic group. The issue here is not hybridity or dual identity per se but the assumption that the student should identify with an Australian identity, which she may have interpreted as white people with drug and alcohol issues. Combined with experiences of racism, she did not feel Australian.

From Maggie’s perspective, her approach to Australian identity is at the heart of Australian multi-culturalism policy, which is that Australian citizens have ‘shared values’ with the right to ‘express’ their cultural heritage. However, this does not adequately address the continued association of ‘Australian’ with being white and Anglo. While the teacher was insisting on a common identity ‘being Australian’, that particular representation of ‘Australian’ was not shared by the student from the perspective of her lived experiences. Therefore, a dual identity of Somali-Australian or a hybrid identity was not possible as the student insisted that she is only Somali.

10 J. WAlToN ET Al.

In terms of hybridity, her assertion that she is only Somali also rejects an Australian multiculturalism policy that not only advocates but demands ‘happy hybridity’ (Lo 2000). This celebration of hybrid identities has been critiqued for losing sight of how identity is made sense of in everyday life as a process (Lo 2000; Noble and Tabar 2002). The student’s stance also draws attention to the lived experience of ‘multiculturalism’ as something that is not automatically seamless and harmonious especially when experiences of racism disrupt the veneer of acceptance and belonging that a celebratory approach to multiculturalism entails. In this sense, rather than aspiring to be ‘included’ as Australian, the student’s rejection of an Australian identity (read as white with drug/alcohol issues), could also be interpreted as both an affirmation of her identity as Somali and as an act of resistance by reclaiming a ‘moral high ground’ for blackness as opposed to her view of a white Australian identity.

A quasi-critical approach was also observed in Class B at LPS, where a more critical discussion about cultural diversity and representation in Australia took place. Lisa and Matt (Class B) used the same lesson content on Australian television advertisements as the other class mentioned above (Class A). The first advertisement was for Holden7 cars from 1978. The advertisement used images of white Australians at the beach with a jingle about football, meat pies and Holden cars as quintessentially Australian. Lisa and Matt helped the students to think about whether the advertisement was repre-sentative of the cultural diversity of Australia at the time.

Student 1: I don’t think I saw one person that didn’t have white skin.

Lisa: Why not?

Student 1: I’m not sure.

Matt: Was it a good representation of what Australia might have looked like?

Student 1: Yeah … [tentative][Matt prompts further]

Student 1: I think there might have been more people with darker skin.

Lisa: Where do you think white-skinned people came from?

Student 1: England, Britain. (LPS Class B, 6/3/12)

Rather than taking a race elision approach, Lisa and Matt drew explicit reference to skin colour and challenged the students to think about whether the majority white Australian representation in the advertisement was accurate. When the student noticed that all the people were white, both teachers used it as an opportunity to prompt the student to think about why this might be the case. When one of the students suggested there might have been people with darker skin living in Australia in the 1970s, Lisa used this to unsettle the students’ assumption of white normativity in Australia by mark-ing whiteness and highlighting that people with white skin might have come from somewhere else.

Discussion

Data from these four schools illustrate different approaches to teaching about national identity. At three of the schools (CPS, LPS, and MPS), the focus was on communicating to the students that they can be Australian as well as have other ethnic or cultural backgrounds. CPS primarily took a cultural essentialism approach whereas LPS (Class B) and MPS tried to challenge underlying assumptions of Australian identity by using a quasi-critical approach. HFPS used a race elision approach to talk about Australian identity, which avoided discussion of difference and instead centred on personal charac-teristics influenced by the International Baccalaureate ‘learner profile’ (International Baccalaureate Organisation [IBO] 2014). Although the approaches differed, a commonality across all the schools was a lack of in-depth critique about the so-called ‘core’ Australian national identity as white and Anglo.

The data presented here illustrate that despite Australia’s multicultural population and decades of multiculturalism policies, cultural essentialist representations of Australian national identity persist in teaching and learning classroom practices (Moran 2011). The mere presence and inclusion of cultural

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 11

diversity within a nation does not automatically unsettle the ways in which national identity is concep-tualised and represented. As Hage (2012, 14) points out, rather than being inclusive, approaches that ‘celebrate’ cultural diversity as if culture is static and discrete (e.g., the cultural essentialism approach CPS used) actually reinforce cultural ‘otherness’ in relation to the dominant culture through the ‘very ideologies of cultural pluralism and tolerance that were supposed to transcend them’. In fact, all the schools promoted the idea that everyone is Australian no matter what their cultural or ethnic background with ‘good intentions’. However, it was clear that an implicit white normativity that was present across all of the schools, albeit to varying degrees, continued to reinforce a white Anglo identity at the presumed ‘core’ of Australian national identity. As Riggs (2004) reminds us, when examining whiteness ‘it is important to look at how racism is perpetuated under the guise of “good intentions”’ and particularly in critical whiteness studies so as not to inadvertently re-centre whiteness.

Findings from this study have demonstrated that teaching and learning about national identity without engaging students to explicitly and critically reflect on whiteness as well as white teachers’ own complicity as white racialised subjects will continue to support and privilege an ideology of white normativity as intrinsic to national identity. Whether or not it is intentional or a conscious decision on the part of the teacher, an uncritical approach condones the normative assumption that ‘real’ Australians are white people and others with racially marked bodies and culturally ‘different’ identi-ties originate from elsewhere. As demonstrated by the Class A examples at LPS, one of the students commented that the non-white people were tourists. Rather than taking the opportunity to explore this assumption, the teacher supported the student’s comment and allowed the discussion to continue with other students adding that people in the advertisement might have been from Japan, India, and so on. Consequently, if these views about national identity, which are perpetuated in everyday forms throughout society (Billig 1995), are not adequately addressed, dominant modes of national belonging will continue to be reproduced and remain beyond the reach of ‘forever-trying to-assimilate’ (Bennett 2008, 507) migrants and their children (Elder 2007; Hage 2012).

As illustrated by the CPS classroom examples, a cultural essentialism approach reinforces white normativity by automatically associating a white Anglo identity with national identity, which cultural ‘others’ must identify with in order to be ‘included’. The race elision approach Rachel used in one of the LPS classes (Class A) also proved to be an ineffective way to discuss cultural diversity and national identity because it glossed over the dominance of a white Anglo-Australian national identity. Compared to Lisa’s students (Class B), Rachel did not prompt the students to reflect on their assumptions. This difference can be partly attributed to teacher confidence and capacity as well as the school demographic, which is majority white Anglo. Lisa explained in a teacher focus group that she had previously worked at more ethnically diverse schools and had gained experience thinking about and teaching about racial, ethnic and cultural difference on both personal and professional levels. Conversely, Matt and Rachel did not feel they had as much experience. In classroom discussions, it was usually Lisa who led the discussions whereas Matt explained that he has ‘not been as exposed to situations like what [Lisa] has’ and his ‘ friendship groups have always been fairly Anglo’ (LPS Teacher Focus Group, 19/03/12). Rachel also felt uncomfortable talking about different cultural backgrounds because she felt she did not have enough knowledge.

At HFPS, these dominant assumptions were not engaged at all, despite teaching a week-long unit on Aboriginal cultures and history (also see Walton et al. 2014). Instead, students were encouraged to think of ‘being Australian’ in terms of generic leadership qualities. This was mostly because of the school’s overall approach to difference, which was to acknowledge it but to treat everyone the same. These findings support research from a US-based study, which demonstrates that due to the norma-tive position of the Anglo/white population in American society, people who identify as being part of this group often see themselves as ‘cultureless’ or even ‘postcultural’ (Perry 2001). A similar point is made by whiteness studies scholars who discuss the ‘invisibility’ of whiteness (Dyer 1997; Fine, Weis, and Wong 1997; Frankenberg 1993) through which those from the dominant racial, ethnic or cultural group see themselves as culturally ‘neutral’ and ‘raceless’ (Kempf 2013). Because of this, they tend to identify based on particular individual qualities rather than feeling compelled to identify as

12 J. WAlToN ET Al.

being of a particular racial, ethnic or cultural group (Perry 2001). In comparison, people ‘of colour’ in the US or people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) and Indigenous backgrounds in Australia, ‘have culture’ (Perry 2001, 60). People who are ‘seen’ to ‘have culture’ are then characterised in the form of essentialised cultural stereotypes rather than as diverse individuals (Ang 2001). Therefore, despite the schools using different ways to talk about national identity, nor-mative whiteness persisted.

Despite these findings, there was one promising approach – the quasi-critical approach – because it demonstrated a move toward a more critical approach to national identity that could rigorously challenge and de-centre whiteness as the focal point for understanding Australian national identity. For example, during Class B observations at LPS, Lisa’s quasi-critical approach meant that she explicitly engaged the students in more meaningful discussions about assumptions relating to Australian cultural and national identity, thus providing guidance on appropriate pedagogical approaches to issues of cultural diversity and whiteness. She stated that the 1978 advertisement was presenting a stereotype of Australian diversity because it did not reflect what the students had learnt about immigration and increasing racial, ethnic and cultural diversity at the time. As a result, children’s comments and ques-tions reflected a more in-depth inquiry about Australian diversity.

Compared to Gayle’s classes at CPS, Lisa helped students consider how people can be Australian and also have a racial, ethnic or cultural identity that is not only white and Anglo. This supports recent research about the positive effects of dual identity on intergroup relations, which simultaneously rec-ognises different cultural identities along with a shared group identity (White and Abu-Rayya 2012). However, in terms of a dual identity approach, the shared group identity is not necessarily going to be a shared Australian national identity and could be a different point of commonality. As Fozdar and Spittles (2010) found in their analysis of Australian migrant understandings of citizenship:

… identification as Australian is not significant for a majority of immigrant citizens. This is not to say that they do not express a close connection and affection for Australia and its people, as demonstrated, simply that this is not necessarily exclusive and may not extend to total identification.’ (141) Many people residing in Australia may also have reservations about national identity as synonymous with exclusionary forms of nationalism. Moreover, issues of identity and belonging should also be understood in relation to experiences of racism, which can preclude belonging and identification with an overarching national identity (Vasta 2013).

Current Australian multiculturalism policy (Australian Government 2011) that focuses on the benefits of cultural diversity in terms of harmony, social inclusion and happy hybrid identities also begs the questions, for whom and for whose benefit? For example, the interaction at MPS between a student who was adamant that she is Somali and not Australian, and Maggie, who emphasised that she is also Australian, draws attention to the focus of Australian multiculturalism, which relies on what has been described as ‘unity-in-diversity’ (Stratton and Ang 1994). This entails having hybrid identities that can be celebrated and thus, accepted. In other words, to be socially accepted as Somali, the student must also identify as Australian. Through her rejection of this and the radical act of simply being Somali, she effectively de-centres a white normative acceptance of ‘difference’ that says she can only be different if she personally declares an Australian identity. Furthermore, as demonstrated in the CPS classroom observations, a focus on being Australian as somehow separate from having other cultural backgrounds can exoticise cultural differences in ways that objectify and contain. Importantly, if Australian identity continues to be dominated by white Anglo representations which are left largely unchallenged, then those who do not have that particular background will continue to feel excluded and everyday injustices through experiences of racism will continue to reinforce those perceptions. Therefore, efforts to be ‘socially inclusive’ such as the teacher’s efforts to ‘include’ the Somali student as ‘Australian’ can actually serve to reinforce feelings of exclusion if assumptions about Australian identity as ‘white’ and ‘Anglo’ are not examined. Failing to be inclusive of multiple forms of identifying as Australian risks potential exclusion even when such efforts are perceived as ‘inclusive’.

Rather than having discussions about ‘who is Australian’, it would be more fruitful to take a critical sociological approach by discussing and understanding historical processes that have formed contem-porary perceptions of Australian identity and to think through social constructions of identity from

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 13

multiple perspectives. As Noble (2011, 830) argues, in Australia, ‘people are increasingly living forms of hybridisation that exceed the conceptual underpinnings of the old-fashioned national-cultural identity politics of the multicultural imaginary’. This critical sociological approach can help children to think about stereotypical assumptions about national identity whereas avoiding talk about difference (race elision) and essentialising difference (cultural essentialism) only reinforced those assumptions. Finally, our findings demonstrate that in building a critically engaged and just society, approaches that deeply and radically unsettle white normative assumptions about national identity are needed. Even the recent implementation of an Australian National Anti-Racism strategy, launched in 2012, will be ineffective if whiteness is only nominally examined.

Recommendations for teacher practice

Our findings highlight that teachers need to be supported at an individual level, a structural level in the school and the broader community and at a policy and curriculum level in order to build capacity to have critical discussions about difficult issues such as national identity, racism, whiteness and privilege. There is a clear need for pre-service training and structured guidance in the national curriculum to provide teachers with theoretically and empirically informed standard procedures for having discussions about these difficult issues. Importantly, pre-service training with a social justice focus needs to be prioritised and sustained rather than implemented as a one-off workshop (Mills 2008). Furthermore, training should use ‘reflexive anti-racism’ whereby teachers critically reflect on their own positionality within racialised social systems (Kowal, Franklin, and Paradies 2013).

Importantly, lack of engagement about these issues only serves to reinforce hegemonic assumptions that enable white normativity to persist (Lappalainen 2009; Magdalena Tascón 2008). Building on a quasi-critical approach as outlined in our findings, we suggest that a critical sociological approach to these complex issues within an historical framework can serve to disrupt white privilege and would provide students with the critical thinking skills to question their assumptions about national identity. For example, teachers can have critical discussions that explain reasons why Anglo cultural norms are dominant in Australian society. Additionally, when discussing cultural diversity, allowing for multiple identification, such as the dual identity approach (White and Abu-Rayya 2012) is another strategy to challenge essentialism and assimilation. This recognises that identity is multi-faceted and diverse within and between ethnic groups.

Overall, children are capable of and interested in having discussions about these topics when given the opportunity (Waldron and Pike 2006). It is important for all students to have a critical under-standing of cultural diversity and racism but teachers also need to be aware of local specificities. For example, students in a majority white school may need more support to critically understand white privilege and issues of racism. As primary sources of socialisation in children’s lives, teachers need the professional capabilities to confidently engage with issues of white privilege and racism in discussions about cultural diversity and national identity (Pearce 2014; Priest et al. 2014a; Ullucci 2011). This is ultimately important to how children think about themselves and relate to others and has significant social implications for building a more critically engaged and just society.

Notes1. We use the term ‘Anglo’ to critique it as a socially constructed term that is neither automatically given nor

static. In British settler societies such as Australia, ‘Anglo’ refers to people who are from or have ancestors from Wales, Scotland, England or Ireland. This is distinct from the term ‘white’, which is also contextually specific and reproduced through social relations, but refers to socially perceived physical features that may be read as racially white and which includes people who are not necessarily from Anglo backgrounds. In short, we use ‘Anglo’ and ‘white’ to critically examine the ways they continue to retain a dominant and privileged position in representations of Australian national identity, despite claims to a multicultural Australian national identity (Stratton 1998).

14 J. WAlToN ET Al.

2. We use ‘conservative’ to describe social and economic policies and beliefs that tend to be politically right-wing. In Australia, politically conservative tends to refer to the Liberal Party and the National Party.

3. The AC, which was introduced in 2013 and is gradually being implemented in all schools, represents the first standardised national curriculum.

4. Preparation (often abbreviated to ‘Prep’) is the first year of schooling (also called Reception or Foundation in some Australian states; Kindergarten in the US).

5. The term, ‘people from minority racial/ethnic backgrounds’ refers to those who are marginalised from positions of power and ‘people from majority backgrounds’ refers to those predominantly in positions of power. In using the word ‘race’ in this formulation we do not mean to endorse a biological notion of difference. We understand race to be a social category based on socially selected phenotypes (e.g., skin colour, hair, eye shape) and ascribed social values (e.g., individual attributes, gender norms, family structures) that have significant social impacts (e.g., social inequalities).

6. The PYP constitutes the International Baccalaureate curriculum for primary school children.7. Holden is an Australian car manufacturer that dominated in post-war 1950s Australia.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

FundingDr Priest was supported by an NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship under Grant #628897. This project was funded by a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation Innovation Grant. Professor Paradies was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship under Grant #FT130101148.

ORCIDJessica Walton   http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3876-2994

ReferencesACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority). 2015. Australian Curriculum. http://www.

australiancurriculum.edu.au/Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Ang, I. 2001. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. London: Routledge.Ang, I., and J. Stratton. 1998. “Multiculturalism in Crisis: The New Politics of Race and National Identity in Australia.

Topia: Canadian.” Journal of Cultural Studies 2: 22–41.Australian Government. 2011. The People of Australia: Australia’s Multicultural Policy. Canberra: Commonwealth of

Australia. https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/publications/the-people-of-australia-australias-multicultural-policy

Australian Government. 2014. Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final Report. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. http://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/review-australian-curriculum

Barrett, M. 2000. “The Development of National Identity in Childhood and Adolescence.” Paper presented at the Inaugural Lecture, Surrey, UK, March 22. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1642/

Bennett, Tony 2008. “Analysing Multiculturalism Today.” In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis, edited by T. Bennett and J. Frow, 488–509. London: Sage.

Billig, M. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Breen, K., and S. O’Neill. 2010. “Introduction: A Postnationalist Era?” In After the Nation? Critical Reflections on

Nationalism and Postnationalism, edited by K. Breen, and S. O’Neill, 1–20. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Carey, J., and C. McLisky, eds. 2009. Creating White Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press.Carrington, B., and G. Short. 1995. “What Makes a Person British? Children's Conceptions of Their National Culture

and Identity.” Educational Studies 21: 217–238. Castagno, A. E. 2008. “‘I Don’t Want to Hear That!’: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools.” Anthropology

& Education Quarterly 39: 314–333.Curthoys, A. 2009. “White, British, and European: Historicising Identity in Settler Societies.” In Creating White Australia,

edited by J. Carey, and C. McLisky, 3–24. Sydney: Sydney University Press.Delgado, R., and J. Stefancic. 2001. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press.

RAcE EThNiciTY AND EDucATioN 15

Dovidio, J. F., S. L. Gaertner, Y. F. Niemann, and K. Snider. 2001. “Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Differences in Responding to Distinctiveness and Discrimination on Campus: Stigma and Common Group Identity.” Journal of Social Issues 57: 167–188.

Dyer, R. 1997. White: Essays on Race and Culture. London: Routledge.Elder, C. 2007. Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity. Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin.Eriksen, T. H. 2010. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. 3rd ed. London: Pluto Press.Fine, M., L. Powell Weis, and L. M. Wong. 1997. Off White: Readings on Race, Power and Society. New York: Routledge.Forrest, J., and K. Dunn. 2006. “‘Core’ Culture Hegemony and Multiculturalism.” Ethnicities 6: 203–230. Fozdar, F., and B. Spittles. 2010. ““Patriotic Vs. Proceduralist Citizenship: Australian Representations.” Nations and

Nationalism 16: 127–147. Fozdar, F., B. Spittles, and L. Hartley. 2015. “Australia Day, Flags on Cars and Australian Nationalism.” Journal of

Sociology 51: 317–336. Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis, MN: University

of Minnesota Press.Frankenberg, R. 2001. “The Mirage of Unmarked Whiteness.” In The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, edited by

B. B. Brander Rasmussen, E. Klinenberg, I. J. Nexica, and M. Wray, 72–96. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hage, G. 2012. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis.

http://www.eblib.comHughes, D., J. Rodriguez, and E. P. Smith. 2006. “Parents’ Ethnic-Racial Socialization Practices: A Review of Research

and Directions for Future Study.” Developmental Psychology 42: 747–770. IBO (International Baccalaureate Organisation). 2014. IB Learner Profile. http://www.ibo.org/myib/digitaltoolkit/files/

pdfs/learner-profile-en.pdfJakubowicz, A. 2006. “Anglo-Multiculturalism: Contradictions in the Politics of Cultural Diversity as Risk.” International

Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2: 249–266.Kempf, A. 2013. “Colour-Blind Praxis in Havana: Interrogating Cuban Teacher Discourses of Race and Racelessness.”

Race, Ethnicity & Education 16: 246–267.Kidd, W. 2002. Culture and Identity. New York: Palgrave.Koleth, E. 2010. Multiculturalism: A Review of Australian Policy Statements and Recent Debates in Australia and Overseas.

Research Paper No. 6, Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia.Kowal, E., H. Franklin, and Y. Paradies. 2013. “Reflexive Antiracism: A Novel Approach to Diversity Training.” Ethnicities.

13: 316–337. Lappalainen, S. 2009. “Making Differences and Reflecting on Diversities: Embodied Nationality among Preschool

Children.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 13: 63–78. Lesane-Brown, C. L. 2006. “A Review of Race Socialization within Black Families.” Developmental Review 26: 400–426. Lo, J. 2000. Beyond Happy Hybridity: Performing Asian‐Australian Identities. In Alter/Asians: Asian Australian Identities

in Art, Media and Popular Culture, edited by I. Ang, S. Chalmers, L. Law, and M. Thomas, 152‐168. Annandale, N.S.W.: Pluto Press.

Magdalena Tascón, S. M. 2008. “Narratives of Race and Nation: Everyday Whiteness in Australia.” Social Identities 14: 253–274.

Mazzei, L. A. 2008. “Silence Speaks: Whiteness Revealed in the Absence of Voice.” Teaching and Teacher Education 24: 1125–1136.

McIntyre, A. 1997. Making Meaning of Whiteness: Exploring Racial Identity with White Teachers. New York: State University of New York Press.

Mcleod, J., and L. Yates. 2003. “Who is ‘Us’? Students Negotiating Discourses of Racism and National Identification in Australia.” Race, Ethnicity & Education 6: 29–49.

Mills, C. 2008. “Making a Difference: Moving beyond the Superficial Treatment of Diversity.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 36: 261–275.

Moran, A. 2011. “Multiculturalism as Nation-Building in Australia: Inclusive National Identity and the Embrace of Diversity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34: 2153–2172.

NAP (National Assessment Program). 2013. Statements of Learning. http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/statements-of-learning.html

Noble, G. 2011. “‘Bumping into Alterity’: Transacting Cultural Complexities.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 25: 827–840.

Noble, G., and P. Tabar. 2002. “On Being Lebanese-Australian: Hybridity, Essentialism and Strategy among Arabic-Speaking Youth.” In Arab Australians: Citizenship and Belonging Today, edited by G. Hage, 128–144. Melbourne, Vic: Melbourne University Press.

Pearce, S. 2014. “Dealing with Racist Incidents: What Do Beginning Teachers Learn from Schools?” Race Ethnicity and Education 17: 388–406.

Perry, P. 2001. “White Means Never Having to Say You’re Ethnic: White Youth and the Construction of ‘Cultureless’ Identities.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 30: 56–91.

16 J. WAlToN ET Al.

Picower, B. 2009. “The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: How White Teachers Maintain and Enact Dominant Racial Ideologies.” Race, Ethnicity & Education 12: 197–215.

Priest, N., J. Walton, F. White, E. Kowal, A. Baker, and Y. Paradies. 2014a. “Understanding the Complexities of Ethnic-Racial Socialization Processes for Both Minority and Majority Groups: A 30-Year Systematic Review.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 43: 139–155.

Priest, N., J. Walton, F. White, E. Kowal, B. Fox, and Y. Paradies. 2014. “‘You Are Not Born Being Racist, Are You?’ Discussing Racism with Primary-Aged Children.” Race, Ethnicity & Education 19 (4): 808–834.

Riggs, D. 2004. “‘We Don’t Talk about Race Anymore’: Power, Privilege and Critical Whiteness Studies.” Borderlands 3 (2), http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/riggs_intro.htm

Santoro, N., J. Reid, and B. Kamler. 2001. “Making Difference Count: A Study of Overseas Born Teachers.” Australian Journal of Education 45: 62–75.

Shen, J. J. 2008. A Documentary Analysis of Australian Multicultural Policy under the Howard Government. Masters diss., Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Sleeter, C. E. 2001. “Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelming Presence of Whiteness.” Journal of Teacher Education 52: 94–106.

Stratton, J. 1998. Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis. Smithfield, N.S.W.: Alken Press.Stratton, J., and I. Ang. 1994. “Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in

Australia and the USA.” Continuum 8: 124–158. Ullucci, K. 2011. “Learning to See: The Development of Race and Class Consciousness in White Teachers.” Race Ethnicity

and Education 14: 561–577. Vasta, E. 2013. “Do We Need Social Cohesion in the 21st Century? Multiple Languages of Belonging in the Metropolis.”

Journal of Intercultural Studies 34: 196–213. VCAA (Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority). 2013. Previous Curricula. http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/

foundation10/curriculum/previouscurricula.aspxWaldron, F., and S. Pike. 2006. “What Does It Mean to Be Irish? Children’s Construction of National Identity.” Irish

Educational Studies 25: 231–251. Walton, J., N. Priest, E. Kowal, F. White, K. Brickwood, B. Fox, and Y. Paradies. 2014. “Talking Culture? Egalitarianism,

Color-Blindness and Racism in Australian Elementary Schools.” Teaching and Teacher Education 39: 112–122. Watkins, M., and G. Noble. 2014. Rethinking Multiculturalism, Reassessing Multicultural Education: Project Report Number

3. Penrith South, N.S.W.: University of Western Sydney.White, F. A., and H. M. Abu-Rayya. 2012. “A Dual Identity-Electronic Contact (DIEC) Experiment Promoting Short-

and Long-Term Intergroup Harmony.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48: 597–608. Wotherspoon, T., and P. Jungbluth. 1995. Multicultural Education in a Changing Global Economy: Canada and the

Netherlands. New York: Waxmann.