Professional Learning

Lansdowne Crescent Primary School TAS

What is the moral imperative for your school to be Asia capable?

• Our moral imperative is for our students to develop the 21st Century skills of collaboration, communication, creative and critical thinking and to view themselves as global citizens able to solve problems locally and globally.
• Our Asia capability program aims to prepare our students to embrace the reality of living in a region and world in which our Asian neighbours are economic world leaders.
• We aim to develop our student's capacity to cooperate and make friendships with people in Asia, which most effectively starts with learning the language

How will your students benefit?

Our students will be able to look beyond themselves and their circumstance to a wider setting and will see themselves as part of the broader landscape of the world. They will have increased knowledge of their closest neighbours and will be able to identify the similarities and differences that exist between cultures, customs, language and issues.

Students develop empathy but also be excited to have broadened their horizons. They will have real life and genuine learning experiences in which to use their learning of Indonesian. The rich learning experiences developed to build the connection with Indonesia will develop our student's critical and creative thinking and communication skills.

What is your school's current engagement with Asia?

Lansdowne Crescent has a sister school in Surabaya – Kaliasin 1. This relationship grew from a BRIDGE partnership. Two of our teachers have travelled to Kaliasin and staff from Kaliasin have visited Lansdowne. 

What is your personal experience of Asia?

• I studied Indonesian for 5 years – during high school and college
• I have travelled to Sri Lanka as a child.
• As an adult I have visited Indonesia – Bali and Lombok. I have travelled to Malaysia – Kuala Lumper and Borneo. I have also visited Hong Kong. My father is currently living in Taiwan studying Mandarin. My daughter will be studying Chinese in 2014.

In what other ways can Australia make a stronger contribution towards building positive relations in Asia?

Recently our Tasmanian Premier toured Indonesia with a delegation of Tasmanian business leaders and cultural leaders. Whilst there the Premier skyped our school children to explain her visit. This excellent communication of the importance of connecting in the business sense with Indonesia really resonated with our students. Our leaders building connections and enabling young Australians to be involved in purposeful ways in Asia is key. The fostering of language and culture learning in all of our schools all of the way through from kinder to year 12 and beyond is very important.