The internationalisation of the Australian higher education sector is not a recent phenomenon. As early as 1904, Asian international students were pursing tertiary studies in Australia (Radford, Ongkili & Toyoizumi, 1984, cited in Burke 2006, p. 333). However, the numbers were low and only increased significantly with the introduction of the Colombo Plan in 1950 as the Australian government provided scholarships for students from developing countries to study in Australia. These scholarships were highly competitive and recipients were selected primarily on the basis of their academic performances. Then, the introduction of full-fee paying places for international students in 1985 changed the make-up of foreign students coming to Australia, as academic results no longer constituted the primary consideration for gaining admission. Due to the income generated from enrolling international students, they became an attractive recruitment target.

Introduction

The teaching and learning of Indonesian in the Australian context represent both a unique opportunity and challenge for developing Australians’ capabilities to engage with Asia and Australia's place in the region. The place of Indonesian in Australian education has usually been justified in terms of the importance of developing a better understanding of the culture and religion of our nearest neighbour (Kohler & Mahnken 2010). This justification is based on a belief that the learning of a language forms a fundamental part of the development of intercultural understanding. However, language teaching approaches have not traditionally made intercultural understanding a central part of programs and have instead focused primarily on the acquisition of the language system. Where cultural understanding has been included in such programs it has typically been separated from the learning of language (Byram 1988). This means that there has often been a disconnection between a stated aim of language learning and the language learning experience offered to students. More recently, however, much attention has been given to pedagogical responses that integrate language learning with intercultural understanding (for example, Byram 1991; Byram and Morgan 1994; Crozet and Liddicoat 1999; Kohler 2010; Kramsch 1993a; Liddicoat 2002, 2005b, 2008; Liddicoat et al. 2003; Papademetre and Scarino 2000). In this chapter, we will extend these initiatives, and examine some of the issues that emerge for understanding language education as an endeavour focused on the development of intercultural understanding using the teaching and learning of Indonesian as a starting point.

EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT IN AUSTRALIA

The judicial thinking in eighteenth century Britain was that harsh punishments were needed to deter potential criminals. The existence of a ‘criminal class’ was one of the prime sociological beliefs. The Industrial Revolution had seen a dramatic rise in the population of cities and petty crime had become a major problem. Crimes against property attracted severe penalties and stealing was a serious offence. Summary offences included vagrancy, poaching, petty theft and drunkenness. Jails became overcrowded and the British Government started to use transportation of convicted criminals to the colonies as an alternative. Britain was forced to look at other locations for its convicts when it lost its American colonies after the War of Independence. Lord Sydney, Home and Colonial Secretary in 1783, needed to solve the problem of overcrowded criminal confinement. During his voyage to the South Pacific in 1770 Captain James Cook had made landfall on a new land and claimed the new land for Britain. The Transportation Act 1784 (UK) authorised transportation to places other than America and in 1786 the Pitt Cabinet made a decision that Botany Bay would be such a place. Captain Arthur Philip was chosen to lead a colonisation expedition to the eastern coast of this recently claimed land and govern the new colony to be called New South Wales.

Introduction

Globalisation has increased the number of international students in many countries and the process is still going on. The number of enrolments by international students in Australian educational institutions is also increasing year by year and the majority of enrolments in Australia are in higher education (Gillard 2009). From 2002 to 2009, the top five sources of these enrolments each year have been from Asian countries and the top country has been China (Australian Education International, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). These huge inflows of diverse students have affected Japanese language programs in Australian universities, which have experienced greatly increased enrolments of international students, particularly Chinese-background students from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. As a result, academic staff in Australia are now extremely challenged by their responsibility for satisfying the learning experiences not only of local students but also often of large numbers of international students.

However, for most of the programs established to teach Japanese as a foreign language in Australian higher education, program structures, courses and curricula have been designed to meet the needs of Australian society and Australian students who have English as their first language. Now, in many Japanese courses there are not only Australian students but also international students from countries where high Japanese competence is needed for study, work and cultural exchange — and where this need is more pressing than in Australia.

Introduction

‘We’ are the good people who research and teach in a typical research-intensive Australian university; ‘they’ are the diverse, multi-ethnic students we are now, literally, in the business of educating. And in our specifically Asian Studies context, we are particularly interested to know how these students interpret their educational achievement, so, at the end of their courses, we ask them to describe what they have learned. One Chinese-background student who was at the end of his undergraduate degree program, wrote curtly in a shaky hand: ‘Multiculturalism is a big fat lie’. In such a comment it seemed to us this student was expressing what they, and many of their colleagues, had personally experienced as the failure of the Australian education process to provide them with learning experience that was equitable, relevant and satisfying for them. In so many cases, the internationalising of higher education in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Australia has quite simply not been able to produce the kinds of teaching that are demanded when international, largely Asian, students enter existing degree programs in large numbers.

The first questionnaire was used for the school sample and, without the life story, for the university students and parents. Question 3.1a ‘What does “feminism” mean to you?’ was added in 2005, as I became increasingly aware of a widespread lack of knowledge concerning feminism, either negatively or positively imagined. In those schools where students asked me what feminism was, I answered that there were many definitions but a popular one was ‘people who believe that men and women should have the same opportunities or be treated the same/equally’. Although minor problems had emerged with other questions (for example, many parents in particular noted ‘books’ as a major source of feminist ideas), I decided not to revise the standard questionnaire, thus retaining consistency across the samples.

The second questionnaire was adapted from the original version in consultation with Karen Walters of Inner City Youth Services, specifically for the early school leavers who are clients of youth services. This questionnaire was used for all the South Australian youth services samples, which included questionnaires distributed to sexuality youth services and by word of mouth. Where the standard questionnaire had a four point scale, from agree strongly to disagree strongly (with a ‘no opinion/don't know’ option), the youth services questionnaire only has ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘don't know’. As the alternative version reduced comparability across samples and I received criticisms from some respondents who felt the questions were too colloquial, I reverted to the original questionnaire for subsequent youth service samples (in Victoria), without apparent problems with comprehension.

THE UNIQUENESS OF ADELAIDE

The history of William Light's plan for Adelaide, particularly its siting and the Park Lands, is a very important element in the growth of the City and the State and is the ‘creative tension’ in the political relationship that developed between the ACC and State Government from 1840. In Bill Peach's view, the free-settled nature of the colony of South Australia contributed to the civilised qualities of Adelaide that has made the City different and special. But it is the continuous belt of Park Lands that makes Adelaide unique and which gives the City its distinctive character as a city in a garden. The City of Adelaide is one of the few cities in the world whose boundaries have not altered since their foundation. The Park Lands provide a clear boundary and sense of identity; whether walking, cycling or driving, you have to pass through them to get to the City. Of all the Australian capital cities, only in Adelaide is there physical evidence separating the centre from the surrounding other local government areas. A good example of this distinctive quality is to compare the boundaries of the City of Adelaide (Figure 1, Introduction) with the boundaries of the City of Sydney in 1971 (Figure 22, Chapter 4).

Introduction

The young women's and men's life stories discussed in Chapter One reveal that, in many relationships, a good deal of emotion work will be needed to connect the female stories of romance to the male stories of sex, before, after and during marriage. These essays also hinted at the unequal distribution of emotional capacities needed to negotiate such complex relationships. Chapter Two explored intergenerational changes, suggesting mothers have bequeathed their daughters a progressive and empowering narrative of changed gender relations but fathers have not prepared their sons in the same way. My claim for a disjunction between expectations in intimate relationships and the emotional literacy brought to the project by each partner is the topic of this chapter. Biographers are more or less self-aware, and more or less reflexive, in assessing the intersection of their ambitions with society's resources and constraints (Adams 2006: 514-6; Adkins 2003: 25).

As the comparison between Anne Summers' essayists and mine revealed, if anything young women today are more committed to marriage and motherhood than their mothers were (see Chart 1.1, Chapter One). The difference is not in the desire to have children but in the desire to combine this with paid work, a challenge for which their parents' experiences provide little modelling (Andres and Wyn 2010: 230).

Introduction

In my first interviews with women of the baby-boomer generation for my book Living Feminism (1997), I asked ‘How have the lives of women changed as a result of the women's movement?’ Several interviewees began to sketch their answers and then added, ‘You must talk to my daughter.’ These mothers were proud of, and a little awed by, daughters who were apprenticed jewellers, in the police force, who believed they could do anything. Because they reached for their daughters' stories to highlight the changes in their own lives, I began asking each interviewee to compare her mother's, her own and her daughter's life and opportunities (see Bulbeck 1997: 9). I also decided to interview some of the daughters, asking them to reflect on the differences between their mother's generation and their own. And I decided to write another book, based on the experiences of these young women who believed they had inherited the whole wide world.

THE STATE PLANNING REVIEW

Premier John Bannon was influential in the development of the State during the 1980s. He combined the Savings Bank of South Australia (founded in 1848) and the State Bank of South Australia (founded in 1896) to form the new State Bank and this was part of a substantial period of expansion in Adelaide. Bannon also created the South Australian Finance Authority to assist the private sector with developments. Further, he brought about the ASER development, despite opposition from the ACC, and in 1985 secured the Grand Prix motor race for Adelaide with the support of the ACC.

However, by the late 1980s there was mounting public criticism that the Bannon Labor Government was failing to deliver major projects. There was a community feeling that the planning system was to blame and the Government believed the existing planning system did not serve the community well. The problem was the philosophy of control behind the City of Adelaide Development Control Act 1976 and the Planning Act 1982. There had been a perception in the 1960s and 1970s that government under Dunstan's influence could bring about change and achieve reform through legislation. This attitude had changed and Greg Crafter observed that what was needed was legislation with some vision that empowered communities and facilitated rather than controlled development.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in international student enrolments in language programs in Australian universities, accelerating the diversity of the language student cohort in the classroom. This increasing student diversity presents many challenges for language lecturers, necessitating both a review of pedagogical strategies and new engagement in innovative teaching practices to enhance learning for all students. As this chapter will show, this is a particularly pressing issue in the context of the first-year Japanese course at an Australian research-intensive university.

Japanese 1A is a beginners’ course for non-native speakers with no or little previous knowledge of Japanese. Since 2008, the student numbers in this course have more than doubled (n=120, 2008; n=190, 2009; n=260, 2010) and in 2010 it became the largest foreign language course at the University. In Semester 1, 2010, this student cohort was diverse in terms of cultural, linguistic and disciplinary backgrounds. Around 60 per cent were international students from a variety of cultures and first language backgrounds, and 90 per cent of them were enrolled in various non-Arts degrees.

Such a unique student group inevitably has profound implications for pedagogy in this large first-year course. It is imperative to create and deliver learning environments where all students feel equally able to succeed both in and beyond their first year at university. One way to create such an environment that maximizes each student's chance of success is through curriculum revisions that integrate study skills development into the curriculum of the mainstream courses/subjects that students are studying for their degree (DEEWR 2008; Wingate 2006).

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONDOUS LORD MAYORALTY

This chapter examines the period from May 1987, when Steve Condous was first elected as Lord Mayor. I also review the decline in the status and importance of the City of Adelaide Planning Commission (CAPC). Jim Jarvis maintained the informal ACC convention of not seeking a further term as Lord Mayor and Steve Condous, the senior Alderman, was elected unopposed to the office in May 1987. At this election Jim Jarvis, John Watson and Bill Manos all retired from the ACC. Thus, there was a considerable loss of knowledge and expertise about planning the City and the ACC's governance arrangements with the State. Condous was first elected as a Councillor for the south-west of the City in 1968 and had served on various ACC committees, but he had not been involved in any of the strategic discussions with the State about the governance of the City.

Condous was appointed as Chairman of the CAPC in July 1987. Ian McPhail, Derek Scrafton, Judith Brine and Rob Nichols remained as the State members. Table 6 shows key individuals who had influence during the period from May 1987.