Neoliberal influences on the implementation of intercultural curriculum initiatives: teacher interactions with the Australian Curriculum

ABSTRACT Curriculum initiatives with intercultural educative aims are not uncommon in many schools around the world. This paper argues that these initiatives and their classroom implementation by teachers is strongly impacted and influenced by the prevailing neoliberal context of schooling. The findings of a project working with teachers on implementing the Intercultural Understanding General Capability and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures Cross Curriculum Priority of the Australian Curriculum are used to demonstrate the specific ways in which neoliberalism has shaped and defined teachers’ work. The neoliberal elements of consumption, individual responsibility, individuals being set adrift from values, surveillance and the illusion of autonomy are used to highlight teachers’ approaches to understanding and implementing the curriculum elements in their science classrooms. Teachers in the study saw the potential for enacting social justice in terms of intercultural education in their classrooms but were often hampered in their efforts by prevailing neoliberal discourses influencing their own assumptions and actions, as well as those of the schools they worked in. It is only through interrogation of how neoliberalism impacts on intercultural educative aims that openings for counter-hegemonic activities can be identified.