Purpose:
This Special Interest Group provides a forum for AARE scholar-practitioners working with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations across a range of educational contexts. The collective is characterised by a shared focus on equity, social justice, and inclusion, and is committed to maintaining and strengthening cultural and linguistic diversity and reciprocity in educational settings. CALD Education SIG members research across a range of disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological domains, and welcome colleagues who wish to contribute to the advancement of CALD-related enquiry, representation, and advocacy.
The CALD Education SIG aims to:
- provide a focal point for CALD scholar-practitioner communication, collaboration, and advocacy;
- promote awareness of CALD-related issues in all educational sectors;
- advance CALD-related research across a wide range of populations;
- convene CALD-specific symposia for the exploration and pursuit of shared research interests, capacity building, and community engagement.
Rationale:
This SIG will provide a much-needed forum for engagement, communication, and the advancement of CALD-related research within AARE. While there are useful synergies between CALD-related research and existing AARE SIGs, including the Language and Literacy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, Inclusive Education, and Social Justice groups, currently no one SIG facilitates a specific and in-depth focus on CALD research. As a result, AARE members working in this space are located across a number of different SIGs, making networking and collaboration difficult. A CALD-focused SIG would also facilitate a more unified presence of CALD researchers at AARE events, allowing the collective to pursue a shared research and advocacy agenda.
Research Interests:
- Multilingual and multi-dialectal education
- Language maintenance
- Cultural identities and representations
- Widening participation in higher education
- Inclusive schooling practices
- Globalisation, migration, and educational policy
- Learners with refugee and asylum seeker experiences
Proposed Activities:
This SIG will convene CALD-specific symposia for the exploration and pursuit of shared research interests, undertake research capacity building events including opportunities for postgraduate and doctoral student development, and provide a unified presence at the annual AARE conference to promote CALD-related research.