EEE752: Critical Essay on Intercultural Understanding in Australia

This essay delves into the crucial topic of intercultural understanding within the context of early childhood education in Australia. It emphasizes the significance of promoting acceptance and understanding of diverse cultures, particularly addressing the marginalization and discrimination faced by indigenous communities. The essay analyzes the picture book 'Sam's Bush Journey' by Sally Morgan and Ezekiel Kwaymullina as a tool for fostering intercultural understanding among children. It explores the book's narrative, characters, and themes, using Johnston's literature and critical literacy assessment framework to analyze the text. The essay also provides teaching strategies for incorporating the book into early childhood curricula, aiming to cultivate children's awareness and appreciation of cultural differences, and highlights the importance of intercultural understanding in shaping young learners' perspectives and preparing them for a diverse global society. References to relevant literature and frameworks are included, along with a discussion of the book's potential to promote empathy and respect for different cultures. The assignment also provides teaching strategies for successfully teaching intercultural understanding to early education students.

Running head: INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
CRITICAL ESSAY ON INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
The promotion of intercultural understanding and acceptance of one’s heritage is crucial
in a culturally diverse population like that of Australia. The issues of marginalization,
stereotyping, discrimination against the indigenous communities especially towards children, is
rampant in such societies. Therefore, this essay would attempt at comprehending the deep
connection that the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders share with their land, animals, and
water and how these relations give shape to their unique culture. The vast indigenous culture that
exists in Australia requires further research, amidst the modern urban societies that have pushed
these individuals to the edge. The picture book considered here, ‘Sam’s Bush Journey’ can be
considered an appropriate device in promoting intercultural understanding among children about
the depth and richness of the Aboriginal communities of Australia.
Intercultural understanding
The past centuries have seen an upsurge in advancement of civilizations and with it, large
scale urbanization. As a consequence, lot of the indigenous population of various lands, have
been either converted to an urban lifestyle or pushed to live in designated zones and locations of
their own. With time, their culture and traditions became folk tales for the people.
Understanding the cultural nuances of a particular place holds paramount significance,
not only from a sociological and anthropological viewpoint but also from that of education. As
our society progresses further into modernization, the roots of emergence, that of the indigenous
people, tend to disintegrate slowly. Their preservation is a must and the significance of those
roots are not only identified by the ones closely connected with the indigenous cultures but also
by higher global authorities.

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Australia has a lot of indigenous people belonging to different cultures. Two well
identified ones are the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders (Montagu 2013). While the
aboriginal account for almost 2.4% of total Australian population, the Torres Strait Islanders
account for almost 0.1 % of total Australian population (Castellano 2014). That might not seem
like a large percentage, but if we consider the total population of a country like Australia, that is
a huge number. They also come with cultural, values, virtues and nuances of their own and
preserving them becomes the responsibility of every individual concerned. This is where early
childhood education plays a crucial role.
Educating the children in school about intercultural understanding should be one of the
vital elements of current educational practices given that the level of knowledge about cultural
history is steadily on a decline (Dahlberg et al., 2013). Starting intercultural education in school
curricula concerning students as young as 3-5 year olds has a positive impact not only on the
education system but also on the students as a whole by shaping their cognition regarding the
cultural understanding of their nations and the diversity that exists in the global cultural network.

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Rationale behind selecting the book
Sam’s Bush Journey by Sally Morgan and Ezekiel Kwaymullina
The book Sam’s Bush Journey by Sally Morgan is a picture book designed keeping
children of the aforementioned age group in mind. The book is about a boy named Sam who
lives in the city, loves all modern technological gadgets just like every other urban kid and does
not care about the bushes. However, that opinion of his changes when he takes walks with his
grandmother into the bushes. He is frustrated because of the discomforts that accompany a bush
journey, including scratches and bruises, the lack of a comfortable bed and proper food, rain and
everything that he dislikes about the rural life. Nonetheless, as he travels into the bushes, he
remembers his grandmother’s words about how nature has always been a source of food, water

4INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
and shelter for the people in the past. He understands that a long time ago, when there were no
buildings and restaurants, people survived on the resources that were provided by the forest
(Curtin & Kragh 2014). The realization that people can live a life of hardship and yet be
unaffected by them sparks a sense of understanding in Sam which allows him to develop an
interest and love for the outdoors (Morgan, Kwaymullina & Bancroft 2009).
The book is written in a very simple, readable language and the illustrations are vivid,
colourful and evokes a sense of tribal art. The following are two excerpt from the book that
defines the pictorial and narrative aspects of the story. It also shows the dreamlike, mystical style
of art employed by the illustrator to capture the children’s attention.

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An important reason behind selecting the book is that it is so closely knit with the
intercultural understanding of a specific group of people that this book becomes an excellent
source material for teaching children the values of intercultural understanding. As
Mudiyanselage (2014) has elaborated, picture books are deemed as appropriate teaching
resources for children as they are influential in building linguistic and emotional literacy along
with offering children a view into the worlds of others, build connections with humans by virtue
of imaginations and share experiences and feelings with imaginary narrative characters. ‘Sam’s
Bush Journey’ is a similar text that allows the children in pre-school to understand and imagine
how other people’s lives, thoughts and feels are extant in their culture and develop a better
knowledge and respect of those cultures (Nikolajeva 2013).

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Critical Analysis
In the analysis of Sally Morgan’s book, Johnston’s literature and critical literacy
assessment framework (2010) has been adopted. It analyses the narrative from three different
perspectives and brings out from the text, a thorough understanding of the underlying theme that
the objective of the analysis is dealing with.
1. The level of the narrative
a. Time: The story is narrated in a relatively modern timeline where the main character
Sam loves the urban lifestyle full of gadgets and technology, modern amenities and
comfort. He is nonchalant about the rural and indigenous aspects of lifestyle and does
not care if the bushes disappear because of his lack of connection with a culture that
is considered backdated in its approaches.
b. Place: The narrative considers two distinctly different settings – an urban setting
teeming with buildings and technology and a rural setting wild with forests, shrubs,
animals, fishes, birds and insects.
c. Characters: Two characters are given extreme significance in the story – Sam who is
ignorant and careless about the natural lifestyle and his Nanna who loves the
outdoors. Both venture into the bushes as Nanna explains to Sam the significance of
the life in forests of their ancestors.
2. Level of Storytelling
Syntactically, the narrative is very simple as it is built keeping young children in
mind. At the same time, the narrative is pragmatically organized in a manner that
explains the contrast between the characters. An instance is provided below:

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“Nanna liked to feed the birds at the waterhole near her house but it’s buzzed with
mosquitoes.
Sam always ended up with itchy red bites that he scratched even in his sleep”.
We find onomatopoeic constructions like the word ‘buzzed’ which is a
morphological construction based on a sound. Similar constructions are employed in the
book in order to make it simpler for the children to establish a connection with the
elements that the story deals with.
The story is not descriptive or expository, but rather a narrative that is also
introspective in nature. It allows for the children to follow a chain of thought parallel to
that of the character that they are relating with.
3. Level of themes and significance:
The underlying themes that are explored in the story are nature, wildlife, ancestral
lifestyle, tribal lifestyle, variety in culture. For the sake of simplicity we can group all of
these elements under the head of ‘Intercultural Understanding’.
The narrative explores the intercultural understanding through Nanna’s eyes. How
she explains the connections shared by the indigenous people with nature, how nature has
always been a provider of resources for them, and how those people found their food and
shelter in nature as well. She explains the deep earthly bond that those people shared with
nature to her young grandson who is deeply touched by her words and starts to transition
towards an understanding that helps him relate to his ancestral roots. Such type of
introspection and reflection in the character is instrumental in shaping the way children
readers will also get influenced by the narrative (Walton, Priest and Paradies 2013).

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Teaching Strategy
There are multiple ways that this book can be used to teach about intercultural
understanding to children. However it must be remembered that the teaching is being
administered to very young learners and the teachers should expect lack of attention as well as
understanding (Gordon & Browne 2013). So reading based tasks cannot be relied upon.
Here are … reading strategies that can be employed to successfully teach intercultural
understanding to early education students.
1. Visual storytelling – The book being pictorial in nature can be used in the form of a
presentation where the kids see the picture and the narrator tells the story to them. At the
same time the narrator also points to the pictures and asks the children what they make of
that picture. Afterwards the narrator must build a gripping narrative style using which
s/he can introduce the children to the aspects of intercultural understanding as described
in the text.
2. Activity based learning – Children learn well when they are engaged in a gripping
activity (Baksh 2016). A small play like setting with colourful cut outs of trees and
streams, birds and animals along with the relevant sounds can be used in order to instil
the feeling of being in the nature in the minds of the children. Since this is a resource
heavy activity, this should be done once or twice.

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Conclusion
Intercultural understanding provides for a better understanding of the cultural differences
that exist in the society. Incorporating that as a part of early childhood education is crucial for
developing young children in a fashion that they would be able to grow up sensitive to the issue
of cultural heritage and richness. Pedagogically, such a curriculum can be really useful for
teachers too. We as teachers can also understand the values of cultural differences and develop
similar practices for more advanced learners who can actively work in the field for cultural
development as well.

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References.
Bakhsh, S.A., 2016. Using Games as a Tool in Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners. English
Language Teaching, 9(7), pp.120-128.
Castellano, M.B., 2014. Ethics of Aboriginal research. Global bioethics and human rights:
Contemporary issues, 273.
Curtin, S. and Kragh, G., 2014. Wildlife tourism: Reconnecting people with nature. Human
dimensions of wildlife, 19(6), pp.545-554.
Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. 2013. Beyond quality in early childhood education and
care: Languages of evaluation. Routledge.
Gordon, A. M., & Browne, K. W. 2013. Beginnings & beyond: Foundations in early childhood
education. Cengage learning.
Johnston, RR 2010, ‘Literature and critical literacy’ in G Winch (ed) Literacy: Reading, Writing
and Children’s Literature, 4th edn, OUP, South Melbourne, Victoria, pp. 534-545.
Montagu, A., 2013. Coming into Being Among the Australian Aborigines: The Procreative
Beliefs of the Australian Aborigines. Routledge.
Morgan, S., Kwaymullina, E. and Bancroft, B., 2009. Sam's Bush Journey.
Mudiyanselage, KD 2014, ‘Encouraging empathy through picture books about migration’, in K.
Mallan & C. Allan (ed.), Picture books and beyond, Newtown, N.S.W.: Primary English
Teaching Association Australia (PETAA), pp.75-91.

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Nikolajeva, M 2013, 'Picturebooks and Emotional Literacy', Reading Teacher, vol. 67, no. 4, pp.
249-254.
Walton, J., Priest, N., & Paradies, Y. 2013. Identifying and developing effective approaches to
foster intercultural understanding in schools. Intercultural education, 24(3), 181-194.