Ep. 77 – Cultivating inclusivity through career education
In education, it is always the unique stories and diverse backgrounds of educators like Dr Tricia Ong add depth to students’ learner experience. As a lecturer in career education at Deakin, she shares her approach to teaching, deeply rooted in cultural understanding and inclusivity. Her work has seen her awarded the 2023 International Visual Sociology Association’s Jon Rieger paper award for an outstanding contribution to the field of visual sociology.
Tricia’s experiences in Nepal, working with sex-trafficked women for her reproductive health study, have been instrumental in shaping her educational philosophy. She talks about how this period has given her invaluable insights into cultural nuances, human resilience, and the importance of advocating for human rights. These formative experiences now underpin her teaching methodology, particularly in her role in career education within the health curriculum at Deakin. Tricia talks about how undertaking her PhD, Reproductive health for the marginalised: the knowledge of young women trafficked into the sex industry in Nepal, has shaped her as an educator in health and career education at Deakin University. Tricia has accomplished this, bringing social justice to the classroom through issues such as gender inequality.
She shares how she has integrated technology such as Padlet into her teaching practice to provide more culturally inclusive insights and opportunities for students. Tricia talks about its versatility in allowing students to share images, write posts, and link videos from their own cultures, enhancing cultural inclusivity in the learning experience.
Listen to episode 77 to hear more about how you can integrate technology to be more culturally inclusive in your teaching practice.
For more information about Tricia’s work, see her bio. To read the book Tricia wrote about the design of the Clay Embodiment Research Method to enable illiterate, stigmatised, oppressed and marginalised women in Nepal to participate in culturally sensitive research:
Ong, T. (2022). A feminist approach to sensitive research: Designing the Clay Embodiment Research Method. Routledge.
NB: Tricia would like to thank Liza Marsh for initially introducing her to how Padlet could be used in teaching. ‘She was a big part of getting me to use this and I owe her a debt of gratitude.’