Clayton campus
The establishment of the Monash Asia Pacific Education Centre in January 1990 reflected a growing awareness of the significance of Asia and the Pacific for Australian education and of a corresponding need to generate educational programs that give practical expression to this awareness. Since the centre's inception, more than 750 people have taken part in the intensive in-country programs which it conducts in Indonesia twice a year and annually in China.
The centre is located in the Faculty of Education and has links with other faculties within the university, networking with the Centre of Malaysian Studies, the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies and the Development Studies Centre, and enjoying a fruitful association with Monash Asia Institute.
The centre sets out to be responsive, to learn as well as to teach, to foster collaboration, to take and to share educational initiatives. Programs of the centre include intensive in-country courses in language, language teaching methodology, fine arts and cultural studies courses. Recent ventures of the centre have included the creation of guidelines for Indonesian language programs, production of texts for four levels of Indonesian language study (undertaken in conjunction with staff of host institutions in Yogyakarta), a manual for teaching Indonesian as a foreign language, readings in Chinese fine arts, and a handbook for Chinese cultural studies.
The focus on Australia's relationship with Asia is sustained in a number of ways: by ongoing communication with host institutions in Indonesia and China, by work on joint writing ventures, and by formal and informal dissemination of ideas and research. Staff of the centre also teach Asia-related courses within the Faculty of Education. Dr Alan Rice is director of the Centre; Dr Margaret Woodward is research fellow.
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