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Towards a Richer Understanding of Cultural Complexity: Examining Diversity and Cultural Identity within Tertiary Teacher Education

By Carol Helene Carter.

Published by The Diversity Collection

The research, on which this paper is based while strongly influenced by my South African background, is firmly located within an Australian tertiary teacher education context. Australia, with its varied population, is well placed demographically to be the site of my examination of diversity and cultural identity.
In this paper I reflect on the assumptions I brought to a PhD practitioner-led action research process and outline aspects of my research journey that led me to interrogate my simplistic and reductive notions of culture and towards a richer understanding of cultural complexity. I examine ambiguities and multiple interpretations within the elusive concept of culture. I define the terms hybridity, essentialism, choice and globalisation that I considered crucial to my understanding of cultural complexities. I have drawn mainly from postcolonial, feminist and transnational cultural theory to explore these terms and link them to learner-teachers definitions of their cultural identities.

International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp.1-14. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 772.442KB).

Dr. Carol Helene Carter

Sessional Staff and Recently Completed PhD Student, Education, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia