Australia in Asia
Implications for Teacher Education in Queensland : Conference Proceedings
Description:... Proceedings of a workshop designed to examine the need of Queensland, Australia teachers in the areas of Asian studies and languages and to provide recommendations and preservice and inservice teacher education are presented in this report. The proceedings include an opening address by the Minister of Education and two keynote addresses: "The Centrality of the Role of the Teacher in Achieving an Asia-Literate Society in Australia" and "National Strategy for Teacher Education for Asian Languages and Studies: Implementation in Queensland." Presentations by four panel members provide information about the present Asia content in the Queensland schools, classroom activities on the subject, strengths and weaknesses of an action research approach in a grade 9 classroom, and the use of a "cluster" system in the planning and implementing of language learning. Summary reports of five workshop groups are given next, and are followed by these recommendations and conclusions: (1) Asian Studies on both cultural and linguistic levels need to be increased for all preservice teacher education students; (2) prospective Asian language specialists must be proficient in the language to be taught, understand teaching methodology, and be provided with an in-country experience; (3) native speakers of Asian languages resident in Australia should complete a full preservice teacher education program before teaching and be offered special needs courses such as Australian acculturation; and (4) inservice teachers shoud be provided with opportunities and incentives to undertake education courses in order to develop increased knowledge of Asia. (LL)
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