The Layered Landscape of Higher Education: Capturing Curriculum, Diversity and Cultures of Learning in Australia

This edited collection interrogates notions of curriculum, inclusivity, diversity, and cultures of learning in higher education from a variety of cultural backgrounds and educational perspectives.

Bringing together an international selection of contributors from a range of disciplines, this book presents different avenues for rethinking the foundational base of cultures of learning while emphasising the importance of interculturality. The crux of the book lies in the fact that the contributors, living through complex cultures, speak/write from their own experiences of seeing, knowing, and doing. Through insights presented by the authors, the book promotes a broadened and deeper understanding of teaching and learning across diverse fields including alternative knowledge, creative arts, education, technology, STEM, study skills, and environmental sustainability. Arguing for the need to review curriculum issues and policies at both an institutional and national level, it highlights the importance of creating collaborative spaces for constructing new and alternative scholarship and methods within higher education. Supported by case studies and examples of teaching practice, the text reveals the current state of educational and cultural changes and challenges for students and educators in higher education while looking towards the future.

This book is a requisite text for academics, researchers, policymakers, support staff, and postgraduate students in higher education.

Margaret Kumar is a Senior Fellow (Honorary) at The University of Melbourne, Australia and Adjunct Professor, Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM), Odisha, India. Dr Kumar lectures in Teacher Training, Research and Academic Skills Training, Multilingualism, Global Literacies, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Her research interests provide insightful perspectives on positioning Methodologies, Curriculum issues, Cultures of Learning, and New Knowledge Systems.

Supriya Pattanayak is the Vice Chancellor of the Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM), Odisha, India. She has extensive teaching, research and policy experience and her research interest is in the field of gender and development, sustainable livelihoods, research methodologies, and social work pedagogies in different contexts.

Nish Belford is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests in Creative arts and teacher education explore culturally responsive teaching and pedagogies for diversity and inclusion. Other research areas include gendered subjectivities of transnational women with education, work, family, diasporic cultures and identities.