Professor Michalinos Zembylas, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management and Academic Coordinator of the MA Programme in “Educational Sciences”of the Open University of Cyprus (OUC), participates in a new research project funded by the Australian Research Council entitled "Culturally responsive schooling”.
The project, which has secured funding through a competitive call with success rate around 19%, will be implemented by a research team of the University of South Australia, of which Professor Zembylas is a member and an Adjunct Professor.
The aim of the project is to research how Australian schools, which are struggling to respond positively to the increasing cultural diversity of the student cohort, become culturally responsive. More specifically, the project explores how the affective environments of schools attend to the diverse cultural, academic and emotional needs of their communities, and brings together methods borrowed from educational ethnography, critical policy analysis, and educational action research. The project will inform curriculum and pedagogical reform in schools, changes to teacher education programs, and potentially ameliorate systemic inequality in Australian schooling.