‘It’s the Future!’: Students as Key Stakeholders in Asia Literacy

Abstract

Although the development of student skills and experiences of Asia are central to the implementation of Asia literacy in schools, the voice of the student is notably absent from the literature. The effort of this chapter is to foreground and valorise the voice and role of students as key stakeholders in relation to Asia literacy, using authentic data collected from three groups of students in a South Australian high school. The students participated in focus groups, responding to a range of open questions in relation to their understanding and experience of Asia literacy, in the classroom and beyond. The findings from these discussions are preseneted in two parts. To start, the broad themes which emerged from the discussions are identified and compared across the different cohorts. Next, in order to unpack them and offer more insight into the broad themes, verbatim examples of the students’ comments in relation to those themes are presented. While the students identify some issues described in the literature, new understandings of these and other issues have been raised. The chapter concludes with recommendations in relation to the development of engaging and coherent pedagogies with measurable outcomes informed by student perspectives and situated in both Australian and Asian contexts.