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Sharon, a teacher at Paperbark Secondary, faced challenges with engagement and intercultural relationships in her year nine art class. She developed a unit that focused on promoting intercultural understanding and engagement. Activities included researching Dreamtime stories and Aboriginal artist Ian Abdella, sharing personal cultural stories, and creating paintings based on partner's stories. Sharon incorporated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories into the curriculum to promote reconciliation and inclusivity. The students' engagement and attendance improved, and intercultural relationships were formed. Overall, Sharon successfully addressed her pedagogical challenge and increased student engagement through deep intercultural listening. Before commencing, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Jagara, Jagara and Yugara people and pay my respects to the elders past and present. Hello and welcome to this episode of Learners in the 21st Century. I am your host Cassidy and for the next 10 minutes I will be guiding you through an investigation and reflection on Sharon's pedagogical challenges within her year nine art class at Paperbark Secondary. Throughout this podcast, I hope to acknowledge and develop our understanding and celebrate the disposition and strategies that Sharon has made to positively impact the diverse cultural identities and linguistic backgrounds within her classroom, school and local community. Paperbark Secondary is an immensely culturally diverse school with more than 10% of students identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and many students from South Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe. Sharon would describe her year nine art class as incredibly diverse, though some students lack passion and display decreased engagement towards the content, which is common for a compulsory subject. Due to a lack of enthusiasm, multiple students have difficulty keeping their attention towards classwork and often revert to their own cultural groups during learning activities. This inevitably leads to a decrease in participation, an increase in behavioural management and limits the formation of strong intercultural relationships. Sharon's overall goal for this study was to promote deep intercultural listening with the aim to increase student engagement and retainment. The unit she developed promotes the general capability of intercultural understanding and the elements reflecting on culture and cultural diversity and engaging with cultural and linguistic diversity and the sub-elements reflecting on the relationships between cultures and identities and develop empathy. The first two activities involve students working in groups to research and share a Dreamtime story and individually researching the artistic style, artworks and culture of Aboriginal artist, Ian Abdella. These tasks allow students to gain new cultural knowledge and engage with First Nations cultures, fostering the development of empathy as students attempt to understand another person's experiences and emotions. Engaging with cultural diversity in the classroom promotes an environment of empowerment for all cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Subsequently, students feel a sense of belonging in their environment and develop positive learning dispositions while experiencing positive peer interactions and relationships. For their third task in the new unit, Sharon assigns the students to cross-cultural pairs to share stories from their individual culture and life experiences. The pairs engage in deep listening before creating a painting based on their partner's life story and culture. These activities provide a chance for new cultural understandings and relationships to form as students make connections with their similarities and appreciate the differences in their cultural identities. This activity is essential for allowing students to develop sensitivity, an open mind, acceptance and appreciation of cultural diversity in the classroom and beyond. Sharon's learning program links to the cross-curriculum priority, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories, and its sub-element, people. This national priority emphasizes the necessity of including the significant contributions of First Nations peoples, histories and cultures in learning content. The primary aim here is to promote reconciliation and educate non-Indigenous students on First Nations cultures and histories and to close the gaps for First Nations students by including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and knowledges in learning content. Racism and cultural insensitivity are significant social issues facing First Nations communities and people of colour worldwide, resulting from colonization and a white supremacist belief system. Educators have the substantial responsibility to minimize and negate cultural ignorance through the inclusion of First Nations cultural knowledges and histories in educational content. Sharon provides non-Indigenous students with an opportunity to connect with First Nations cultural beliefs in their first task and gain appreciation for a prominent Aboriginal artist whose artistic style inspires their final activity. On closing the gaps, this learning initiative promotes inclusion and belonging to First Nations students who have historically been negatively impacted and rejected by Western education policies and institutions. Sharon's unit content uplifts First Nations voices and knowledges, which increases feelings of inclusion and pride for her Aboriginal students. When First Nations students see their identity and culture reflected in their education, their participation in learning activities increases as they feel appreciated and seen as a member of the classroom society. Additionally, this provides students with a link to their individual prior knowledge which aids in the completion of the task and the disposition in which students approach their learning. To support this learning investigation, Sharon used the framework from Tyson Young-Kaporta's Eight Ways of Aboriginal Learning pedagogical practice to address the individual differences, skills, and needs of her students, while integrating Aboriginal perspectives and learning techniques into her teaching methods and activities. Sharon successfully applies the pedagogy in her activities to increase the engagement of her First Nations students, while making their identities and culture feel valued and celebrated in their classroom. This promotes reconciliation, decreases cultural ignorance, and improves outcomes and engagement for First Nations students based on nationwide national school reform agreements. Encouraging First Nations cultural understanding to all students was the challenge and goal for this unit, aiming to achieve deep cross-cultural listening, a concept first introduced to Shannon from a local Aboriginal elder. Here, we can observe a direct link with Young-Kaporta's pedagogical practice, which suggests learning through story sharing to provide opportunities for students to make personal connections with the content and each other. Sharon refreshes her lesson by moving her class outside to complete their interviews and paintings, which relates to the land-length elements of the Eight Ways pedagogy. This had tremendous impact on the class's demeanour and allowed them to reconnect with nature while minimising the necessity for behavioural management. The new lesson created is undoubtedly supported by a pedagogical basis, the general capability of intercultural understanding, and the PCP Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories, as well as numerous years of professional experience. We have gone through the alterations and inclusions Sharon has made to embed cultural practices in her teaching, promote intercultural connections, and increase student engagement. Now let us identify the specific outcomes from the learning initiative. Significantly, increasing relatability in the content resulted in a fluctuation of participation in class activities, as well as a notable increase in attendance for previously disengaged students. Due to their third task, students gained a unique understanding of a peer, which encouraged students to respect and listen to one another. Respect and understanding increased as students felt valued and heard as they engaged within activities that centred their own cultural identity. For Indigenous students, this increased confidence in the content as they could relate it to their own cultural and life experiences, and promoted their sense of belonging in the school environment. Sharon shares an incredible story from this unit, in which a young Aboriginal girl from her class had the opportunity to share a personal connection with Aboriginal artist Ian Abdullah, which she was enormously proud to do. Based on the incorporation of First Nations culture into the project, the participation and attendance of her Aboriginal students increased tremendously, and they became positive role models to their peers. Students from South Asia and Africa were also positively impacted by the final task, as they felt understood and appreciated by sharing their cultural identity and knowledges with the peer. Sharon highlights the increase in intercultural relationships following the learning activities, with many students forming connections with those they previously had not spoken to. This rejuvenated the classroom culture from a previously difficult-to-maintain group, to a connected and engaged group with increased empathy and understanding of each other. Overall, Sharon successfully tackled her pedagogical challenge by maintaining student participation and intercultural deep listening, which led to an increased engagement in the learning process for all students involved.