A sociological model of a multicultural society was developed by the late Professor Jerzy Smolicz, School of Education at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. The aim of this paper is to review the development of the model and its impact on education and social policy in Australia. Professor Smolicz was a distinguished scholar whose works on cultural and linguistic pluralism have been well recognised in Australia and internationally. His formulation of multiculturalism was based on core values as symbolic of a particular cultural group and its members, in juxtaposition with overarching values which are shared across all groups in society. The model was developed to understand the possible patterns of social and cultural interaction among members of the dominant and minority ethnic groups and thus to provide directions for education and social policy.

The focus of this study was the personal views of 111 secondary students on playing sport. The study included a year 11 class from six schools across the state, independent and catholic school sectors in Adelaide; the principals agreed to allow their students to participate on a voluntary basis. The method followed the theoretical framework for understanding individuals' personal perspective on a particular phenomenon, derived from the humanistic sociological approach of the Polish American sociologist, Florian Znaniecki, and developed by J J Smolicz for research on cultural pluralism in Australia. Only 10% of the respondents indicated that they did not participate in any form of sport. The remainder claimed to be involved in 24 different sports, with soccer named by 29%, eight other sports by 6 - 19% and each of 14 sports by less than 5% of the students. The respondents' feelings towards sport, were ascertained in two questions on what they liked and disliked about playing sport. The 196 likes and 103 dislikes mentioned were categorized into major themes and subthemes. Sport as fun was mentioned 37 times and making friends through sport 34 times. Twelve respondents disliked the possibility of being injured while playing sport and another ten the competitive element in sport. This study contributes to an in depth understanding of these secondary students' participation in sport, especially the range of sports played, and the many facets of what they liked or disliked. The students' views have implications for those teaching and administering sport for young people.

No matter where they live on the globe, most young people involved with sport today find themselves confronted with cultural diversity. At the spectator level they watch live, or on television coverage, players from different countries, with differing cultural traditions, competing in international competitions, such as the Olympics, World Cup Soccer, the Wimbledon, French or American Tennis Championships, the Tour de France, or even the Adelaide Tour Down Under in cycling. Except in the case of the Olympics, the professional teams involved are assumed to be made up of the best players available, regardless of the culture and country they come from. As a result, individuals from quite different cultural backgrounds who are outstanding performers in their particular sport attract much media attention. They become familiar figures to viewers around the world who see them continually on TV, playing in matches or appearing on sports shows. T. Marjoribanks and Farquharson (2012) have pointed out that such international stars often become role models for young people across the globe, inspiring them in their participation in sport.

This paper reviews some key memoir studies, which were carried out in South Australia, and considers their process of data collection and analysis. A second aim is to explore the current status and usefulness of Znaniecki's memoir approach in contemporary educational research. Smolicz followed Znaniecki in emphasizing the need to accept social and cultural values and actions as facts, just as human agents themselves accept them. Every individual was seen as a member of various group social systems and interpreted as a center of experience and actions based on the cultures of those groups. Smolicz also adopted Znaniecki's memoir method of collecting and analyzing personal data in order to understand the actions and attitudes of young people of immigrant families and their educational experiences in Australian schools. These conscious human agents played an important role in maintaining and changing their group's cultural systems. This paper highlights examples of various forms of memoirs collected from four different studies focused specifically on the issue of cultural identity. The comments of the participants, who came from various minority ethnic groups living in Australia, illustrate the nature of the comments made, as well as the researchers’ analysis and findings. The research studies of Smolicz and his associates demonstrate that memoir method has an important place in understanding the culture of different groups, which can be applied in many contexts - global, ethnic, national, and local.

Raewyn Connell in her discussion of Southern social science theories, considers Ibn Khaldun's contribution to the understanding of civilisation and sociology as so rich and important that it is still relevant today. This paper builds on Connell's introduction to Ibn Khaldun's work by first reviewing his ideas of education in the Muqaddimah and then investigating the extent of their contemporary relevance, for example, in teacher education programs today in Australia's multicultural society. Ibn Khaldun was a Muslim scholar born in what is now called Tunisia, North Africa, in 1332. His writings, which encompassed history, philosophy of history, sociology, education and pedagogy, are best exemplified in his greatest work, the Muqaddimah, written as an introduction and commentary on his universal history. Ibn Khaldun provided a long and detailed discussion of the concept of education and pedagogy in Chapter Six of the Muqaddimah. His classification of knowledge according to classical Islamic tradition is a valuable guide to the range of sciences in existence at that time. He also provided his views on teaching and learning issues which have their counterparts in today's classrooms. The latter part of this paper looks at the nature of curriculum in current teacher education programs in Australia and considers the development of a more inclusive approach in relation to Islamic communities in Australia. Such a move could result in Ibn Khaldun's ideas on education being incorporated into teacher education programs in Australia.

This special issue contains five articles that have been written by members of our research network. As we have said above, these articles have emerged out of our combined efforts at grappling collectively with Southern Theory and education. As such the editorial process we have undertaken has been collaborative (although not usually without a deal of debate), and we hope will be productive - in an intellectual, not instrumental sense that is! The articles included here are very diverse in their foci and contexts and we hope that they may stimulate thought and offer resources for, and examples of, doing Southern Theory in Education.

Debates have been under way for some time over the very nature of 'foundational knowledge' in many social science disciplines. At the core of the debates lies the collapse of the universalist premises of disciplinary knowledge. Many scholars have exposed the highly provincial nature of what has been considered 'theory' and its exclusive process of knowledge production which centres largely on the institutions in the global North (Alatas, 2006a, 2013, Chen 2010; Connell, 2007, 2014, 2015; Mignolo, 2011; de Sousa Santos, 2014). For instance, modernity, the central concept in sociological theorizing, has long been conceptualized as a peculiarly Western social phenomenon, disconnected from its underside, coloniality (Bhambra, 2007; Go, 2013). These critiques have shown how the uneven flows of intellectual influence and the intellectual division of labour, which designates the West as the source of 'theories' and the Rest as 'data mine,' underpins the contemporary geopolitics of academic knowledge. Raewyn Connell's (2007) Southern Theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science from which this special issue has taken its cues, has both initiated and emerged out of these ongoing critiques of the state of academic knowledge and its processes of production on a global scale.