What matters to parents

The significant differences in emphasis on visual and auditory ability, awards and teaching may, on the other hand, be more suggestive of a cultural difference with those of an IndoAustralian heritage placing greater value on art or music. If this is true, then there may be may a need to incorporate more of these into the daily life of children from Indian backgrounds.

EuroAustralians put significantly greater value on kinaesthetic awards and teaching of physical skills and this may be a vindication of the stereotype Australians as “sports mad”. In response, IndoAustralian parents may wonder at the number of hours and resources allocated to physical activities such as sport within the crowded school day or the often disproportionate number of awards for sporting ability at speech night.

Finally, while both groups stressed the value acknowledging, encouraging and teaching interpersonal skills and the value of acknowledging and encouraging intrapersonal or self-knowledge skills in the home, IndoAustralians placed less value on the school as an agent in bringing forth this set of attributes. This may indicate that Indian parents may be expressing a stronger belief in a separation of roles of school and family in developing values in children.

Two main conclusions can then be tentatively drawn from the survey. First, the data indicates that IndoAustralian and EuroAustralian parents, of the same socio-economic status, are quite similar in the value that they ascribe to the different intelligences of their children as reflected in their abilities, the value of awards for these abilities and the importance of teaching to these.

Second, there may be differences in the strength of the value that IndoAustralian and EuroAustralians ascribe to each of the intelligences and resultant abilities. These differences in emphasis and/or the role of family versus school in developing these abilitities, could result in misunderstandings or conflict between Eurocentric teaching programs and the values of IndoAustralian parents. However, these differences are, at best, only suggestive due to the limited sample size and lack of assurances that the sample is representative of the wider IndoAustralian population.

Therefore, the intention of this report is not to attempt to close the topic but rather to raise questions about the fit between migrant cultural values and EuroAustralian values and encourage more research.