Investigating Pre-service Teachers' Linguistic Funds of Knowledge (original) (raw)
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Australian education policies aspire to meet the unique needs of all students including those from linguistically diverse backgrounds; however, a first step in achieving this aim is clear identification of such students. Many children from previous migrant families and new arrivals to Australia come from homes where at least one parent speaks a language other than English. This exploratory research utilises survey and interview responses from students and staff in five Queensland state high schools. Results showed that 79.5% of the 2,484 students surveyed were from Englishonly homes with only 10.5% classified as having English as Another Language/Dialect. The remaining 10% were also from bi/multilingual homes. While early identification of bi/multilingual students allows for appropriate assessment and strategic support, staff responses highlighted limited preservice training and/or understanding of how to support these students. Only 4.7% of staff surveyed had received any academic training, and 10.4% professional development, about teaching students from diverse backgrounds who, in the surveyed schools, accounted for 20.5% of the student cohort.
The development of literacy in languages other than English is frequently overlooked in schools, despite the need for students to develop a suite of 'multiliterate' skills. One school's bilingual learning arrangements -designed to support students (over 90 per cent of whom are learning English as an additional language) in the development of English and two other languages -are reported on in this article. Student achievement data reveal high levels of English-language achievement over time in students learning bilingually. Student and parent questionnaire and interview data reveal that bilingual learning is viewed as highly important for social, familial, educational and identity-related reasons, though the degree to which languages other than English require ongoing school support divides parent opinion. Ultimately, this article reveals that much needed academic language proficiency in English need not be at the cost of supporting students' emergent bilingualism and biliteracy. As such, bilingual education programs such as that reported on here offer models for schools seeking to maximise students' language and literacy potential, enhance their identity construction, and respond to the literacy challenges of the 21st century.
1994
Based on an Australian study creating sociolinguistic profiles of nine languages other than English (LOTE) commonly used in Australia, the report examines implications for public language policy and planning. The languages are: Arabic; Chinese; French; German; Modern Greek; Indonesian /Malay; Italian; Japanese; and Spanish. The report begins by giving an overview of the history of commonwealth language policy aivi outlining state and territory language policy initiatives. It then describes the curtunt state of LOTE and English language policy and offers some background on the theory of language planning. A chapter is devoted to language policy in the context of business and trade. Explanations of trade patterns with the countries represented by the nine languages are offered here. The final chapter explains the project in which the sociolinguistic profiles were created and summarizes them, focusing on three aspects: the individual languages' role in relation to migration and Australian society; quantitative data resulting from the study; and qualitative data emerging from the study. Results of a student attitude survey are also summarized. Contains 172 references.
Community language programs in Australian schools: policy at the crossroads
International Journal of Learning
The linguistic situation in Australia today presents an intriguing case for sociolinguistic inquiries. Despite the recent waves of migration from non Anglo-Celtic regions, the majority of Australians today are primarily monolingual with English being the dominant language. More critical, perhaps, is the diminishing appeal of second language learning even among second generation speakers of the large ethnic communities. This is indeed ironic giving that prior to white settlement in Australia, the Aboriginal inhabitants were predominantly multilingual with more than 250 languages (and many of their dialects) spoken by the 300 000 original inhabitants at the time when Captain James Cook's ship reached Botany Bay in Sydney in 1770. Given the size of the postWar migration, it was not until 1987 that the Australian government adopted a formal national policy on languages becoming 'the first English-speaking country to have such a policy and the first in the world to have a multilingual languages policy' (Australian Alliance for Languages 2001: 2). This paper will discuss the historical context for multilingualism in Australia and the current trend in government policy and funding. It will provide insights into community language programs and the challenges of remaining viable and relevant in the current social and political climate. Statistical analyses will be used to highlight emerging trends and future prospects.
Second languages and Australian schooling
Journal of Educational Studies, 2009
S e c t i o n 1 Society and education Context and scope First and second languages Compulsory schooling Language competency of Australians and its sources Community and foreign Policy energy in second language learning Policy effects General social effects of existing second language policy Human capital and rankings School and post-school effects The problem of the dominance of English English as first-choice foreign language Bilingualism in other societies Our region Concluding comments S e c t i o n 2 Policy and programming Language ideologies Comfortably British Assertively Australian Ambitiously multicultural Energetically Asian Fundamentally economic The policy parade Languages 'available' for policy attention Policy as text, discourse and practice Community languages In the schools and universities Whitlam-Fraser-Hawke National curriculum moves Hobart Declaration Adelaide Declaration Language planning declarations Melbourne Declaration Comments on recent developments Policy voices and policy interests Concluding comments http://research.acer.edu.au/aer/8 viii S e c t i o n 3 Teaching and learning: Choice, pedagogy, rationale and goals Effecting change Languages provision Ecology of policy influences Pedagogy The teacher as the ultimate resting point Progress in pedagogy and program design Audiolingualism Second language acquisition (SLA) Communicative language teaching (CLT) Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) Intercultural language teaching and learning (ILT) Immersion Research into immersion Two-Way Immersion Immersion, explicit teaching and out-of-school use Conclusion to immersion research Rationale and goals in teaching and learning Cultural and intellectual benefits of bilingualism Concluding comments References
Current Issues in Language Planning, 2004
Promoting diversity has become a prominent goal in language-in-education policy discourse in two broad contexts. On the one hand, language policies take on the challenge of maintaining and developing de facto linguistic and cultural diversity through language acquisition planning; on the other hand, they portray themselves as active agents of social change and aim to develop positive cross-cultural attitudes through language education. This paper discusses these two main aspects of language-ineducation policies. The discussion is focused on the Australian and the European policy discourses. These two contexts offer an interesting point of comparison as they represent Western democracies with a highly multicultural and multi-ethnic population.
Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2020
Within Australia, the State of Victoria has the greatest ethnic diversity and the largest number of second languages used at home. It also has the highest rates of students participating in language learning at school. It is also home to the country’s largest and oldest government school for second language learning - the Victorian School of Languages (VSL) which currently teaches 45 languages to approximately 16.000 students in 40 centres across the state. This paper develops a profile of the human capital of language teachers at the VSL and explores their views, which have until now been unexplored. It draws on an extensive anonymous survey of the VSL staff (mostly teachers) with over 552 responses. The results are both predictable and yet diverse. The findings show that the staff at the VSL are demographically a unique group, as they represent a rich gathering of cultural and linguistic diversity that is unlikely to be matched in any other institution in Australia. This paper pre...
Vox the Journal of the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education, 1991
NOTE 332p.; Intended to be published twice per year. Two-cone charts and colored photographs may not reproduce well. PUS TYPE Collected Works-Serials (022) JOURNAL CIT VOX: The Journal of the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education; n3-5 VOX is the journal of the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Educatic.:. It is a medium for the exchange of intonation on language slrolicy and multicultural education issues, and in particular, the National Policy on Languages. Two issues will be published each year. This issue is presented in two sections. The first section contains information about ACCLAf4E, fr^ activities, the implementation of the National Policy on Languages and recent developments in languages policy in Australia and overseas. The second section consists of contributed articles relating to afferent aspects of languages policy. Articles, with photographs or other illustrations where possible. are invited for consideration for future issues.