The Asia Education Teachers' Association (AETA), is a voluntary non-profit organisation, Valuing cultural diversity and promoting intercultural understanding in a networked world.
The Asia Education Teachers' Association (AETA), is a voluntary non-profit organisation, Valuing cultural diversity and promoting intercultural understanding in a networked world.
The Asia Education Teachers’ Association was started forty one years ago as the Asia Teachers’ Association by a small group of teachers responding to the introduction of a new course in NSW, … Asian Social Studies.
This subject was taught in Years 7 to 10 and took an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Asia where respect and understanding of and for cultural diversity could develop in students, skills, which were essential for living and working in a networked, global environment.
Through interdisciplinary study, students would learn to INVESTIGATE, VALUE and COMMUNICATE about the region on our door step. The study of History and Geography would be integrated with the study of culture, religion, anthropology, literature, language and the Visual and Performing Arts.
The Association provided teacher in- servicing, conferences and speakers to assist teachers who were tackling the new course. They began with a news letter [four pages]; this grew into a Journal of sixty to eighty pages, four times a year. Teachers and educators provided material and their time for it on a voluntary basis.
The Journal includes programmes, units of work, book reviews, bibliographies, fieldwork worksheets, conference papers, classroom ideas, video and film worksheets, background briefings, resources and tours. These are in the context of the requirements of the National Curriculum and Teacher needs and training.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION is at the centre of what the Association produces for teachers to assist students to acquire a sense of relationship between the past, present and the future and to do it using a structure that enables them to deal with emerging issues relative to their society and to global civilisations.
The revolution in communications, necessitated the move to an on-line Journal, which is more accessible to teachers and provides savings in time, postage and costs to members.