MacKillop Catholic College

- published, October 2009

School profile

MacKillop Catholic College, situated in Hobart, is a co-educational Catholic College from Years 7–10 with 560 students and 76 staff.
School website: www.mackillop.tas.edu.au

Craig Deayton, Principal

The project has provided me with the opportunity to become much more informed about Asia and the possibilities for integrating studies of Asia into the curriculum. I found the materials from the Leading 21st Century Schools: Engage with Asia project (the L21CS project) instructive for understanding the rationale for change and invaluable for building networks and resource banks.

The L21CS project processes provided me with the opportunity to refine the educational direction in my own school by examining how well we educate students about Asia and how well we structured our Asian languages program. It also invigorated me to re-establish a lapsed sister-school relationship. Membership of the L21CS State Co-ordinating Group has also provided much opportunity for increasing my personal knowledge and motivation. And I found the opportunity to work with Principals and leaders from across Australia exceptionally worthwhile for my work at school level.

I’m certainly better informed and more motivated as a result of my involvement. If I had my time again I would work side-by-side with teachers in the preparation of additional units of work. The grant application process was very valuable in opening staff conversation on which area of the curriculum to focus on to have the most effect.

Getting started

Distributed leadership

An important strategy was to encourage key staff members to take responsibility for project activities. They took it on and successfully completed the important task of auditing the curriculum.

Finding out the current situation

To begin with, we conducted audits in English, SOSE and The Arts, across each year level curriculum to identify how well Asian issues, Asia-related content and Languages were included. We especially looked at Technology, LOTE, Science, religious education, and our extra curriculum offerings. We discovered that the optional Japanese language course in the senior years is robust and that there is good coverage of Asian content in most learning areas.

We found that Asian themes were limited in the junior years of 7 and 8 to SOSE and only then in a disconnected and relatively brief fashion. Japanese language is compulsory for all students in Year 7 but becomes optional in Year 8. We set about rectifying this through curriculum planning.

Outcomes

One of the significant benefits of the project was to re-establish our sister-school relationship with a school in Japan. This had lapsed in previous years with little school-to-school interaction occurring. We plan to extend this relationship to other Asian schools through our existing links with ex-students currently working in schools in Asia.

Another development was the taiko drum performances organised by The Arts faculty for all students at the college. The performance raised the profile of this cultural practice in a very enjoyable way and made a large impression. We also held a Cultural and Culinary Festival for one week in July. While its genesis was in the LOTE faculty, several cross-faculty events occurred.

An in-country experience to Japan was offered in 2008 and taken up by a large number (37) of students and 5 teachers. Students visited Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nara and Kyoto.

Japan trip participants made major presentations to students, parents and staff informing them of their experiences. The trip fostered networks for the school and other links with the Akkeshi prefecture in Japan.

The next steps

Building a community of learners

Teachers have been delegated responsibility to continue including studies of Asia across the curriculum. To build a community of learners about Asia, we will identify staff knowledge and experience of Asia through an audit. We are planning for Asia-interested and knowledgeable staff members to assist other staff in their particular learning areas.

For example, one teacher with experience of Thailand will share their knowledge to write units of work for cross-curriculum activities based on Thai culture and language.

Exploring community resources

Another audit we will conduct will be of resources so that we can draw on those from the local community, particularly our parent community. A number of parents who presently assist with LOTE Week are keen and would welcome further involvement. We know that we also have other parents with links with neighbouring schools and some others are particularly interested in Asian hospitality. We are anticipating that these will bring about some exciting and innovative developments within the college.