Category Archives: Inclusive Education

Directions in Education, Diversity in education, Engaging Learning Environments, Inclusive Education, Primary Education, Uncategorized

Learning and thinking about languages in super-diverse classrooms

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Post by Dr Jacqueline D’Warte

In 2019, cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue and a broad international commitment to multilingualism and linguistic diversity are at the centre of global educational policy and practice (UNESCO 2018). In this International Year of Indigenous Languages, global educators are working in classrooms that commonly comprise young people who speak multiple languages and dialects. These young people connect to and interact with diverse cultures and traditions across time and space, and they make meaning in multiple languages, multiple modes and media.

If people know my language they will know my personality (Ahmed Age 10).

I got to understand more about myself, my language and about the languages of my friends (Maura Age 11).

The above comments from Ahmed and Maura are representative of those shared by many multilingual young people involved in a recent Australian research project undertaken in Western Sydney classrooms (D’warte, 2014; 2016; 2018). This research conducted over four years, engaged young people and their teachers in Years 1 through 8 as researchers of ways they were reading writing, talking, listening and viewing in one or more languages, inside and outside of school.

This research was undertaken as part of regular classroom lessons; students learned to be researchers, observing and collecting information about the languages heard and seen within the school and surrounding neighbourhood. They also interviewed each other, collecting information about their language and literacy practices, for example, the languages they spoke and when, where, and with whom they were spoken or learned. They collected information about translating for family and friends and ways they were communicating, reading, and viewing in online environments. Students also created visual representations of their individual practices and experiences. Teachers created lessons that supported students to collate and present their collected data and they used the students’ information for ongoing learning. This included a range of lessons across subject areas: for example, working with data in math, facilitating writing tasks and comparing words, sound systems and grammar in English, mapping and research work in geography and history

What has been learned?

Teachers’ and students’ understandings and awareness of the ways young people were navigating their multilingual worlds were enhanced.  As the student quotes above suggest, there is a powerful relationship between language and identity. This relationship was illuminated as home languages were validated and students became knowledge producers. Very few students involved in this research saw any relationship between the language and literacy practices and experiences of home and school as the research began. Most often they did not view their foundational linguistic knowledge as fundamental to learning and did not view their linguistic capacity as a strength.

Over the course of the classroom work, student confidence increased as many students began to consider what they knew and could do and began to discover ways to apply their knowledge and skill to English tasks. For many English as an Additional Language or Dialect Learners, learning moved away from typically focusing on what was limited or lacking to using students’ knowledge and skill as a starting point for learning. Evidence suggests this work promoted intercultural understanding for all students, and had a significant influence on self-esteem, and belonging for many young people who were struggling with English learning.

While many teachers knew their students spoke languages other than English, they were surprised by the variety and frequency of students’ language use and the complex multimodal, multilingual tasks they were engaged in outside of school. Teachers across classrooms reported the discovery of previously unknown information about their students. This classroom work enabled students and their teachers to make explicit connections between home and school, with teachers reporting an increase not only in students’ confidence but also in learning. They also reported an increase in their own ability to build on home language learning and reimagine curriculum that was cognitively challenging and engaging for their students. This work offered new opportunities for building relationships with parents and community members and this resulted in increased parent participation in classrooms and in student learning more generally.

            Language is not just about culture it is about who you are (Mona, Age 11)

It is well established that capacities in one language can support or advance the development of another (Baker & Wright, 2017; Cummins, 2015). However, recent national and international research also identifies strong links between the recognition and use of first language and student identity and wellbeing and the ways this can improve education outcomes (García & Kleifgen, 2018; Rymes, 2014; Wright, Cruikshank, & Black, 2018; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009)

Australia’s 120 surviving Indigenous languages (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 2018) are joined by more than 300 languages spoken by 21% of Australians who speak a language other than English at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Australian classroom are culturally and linguistically dynamic spaces that offer exciting teaching and learning opportunities. What we do know is that the future is multilingual and multicultural and perpetuating and fostering a pluralist present and future (Alim & Paris, 2017) is a crucial and important educational endeavour.

About Dr Jacqueline D’Warte

Jacqueline is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. She has 15 years of K-12 teaching experience in Australia, the United Kingdom, and India. She began her career as an elementary school teacher teaching a range of grades and specialising in ESL and literacy development. Jacqueline’s research interests include exploring connections between language and learning and how these influence educational equity, teacher and student expectations and teacher practice in culturally and linguistically diverse educational settings. Jacqueline’s most recent research involves students in primary and high school in being ethnographers of their own language and literacy practices. This research builds on the linguistic and cultural diversity that exists in 21st century classrooms by engaging young people in exploring how they use, change, invent and reinvent language and literacy practices in new and interesting ways.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017, 2016 Census: Multicultural – Census reveals a fast changing, culturally diverse nation. March, viewed 28th January, 2017, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/media%20release3

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 2018. Indigenous Australian Languages: Celebrating 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, viewed 10 November, 2017 https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/indigenous-australianlanguages

Paris, D., & Alim, S. (2017). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies. Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. New York: Teachers College Press.

Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. (6th ed.). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Wright, J. Cruickshank, K., & Black, S. (2018) Languages discourses in Australian middle-class schools: parent and student perspectives, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(1), 98-112

Cummins, J. (2015). Intercultural education and academic achievement: A framework for school-based policies in multilingual schools. Intercultural Education, 26(6), 455–468.

García, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2018). Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs and practices for English learners (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Rymes, B. (2014). Communicative repertoire’ in C Leung & BV Street (Eds.). The Routledge companion to English studies, Routledge: London, pp. 287-301.

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (2017). International mother language day: Towards sustainable futures through multilingual education. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/international-mother-language-day/UNESCO, 2018.

Vertovec, S. (2010). Towards post‐multiculturalism. Changing communities, conditions and contexts of diversity. International Social Science Journal 61(199), 83-95.

Yunkaporta., & McGinty, S. (2009) Reclaiming Aboriginal Knowledge at the Cultural Interface. The Australian Educational Researcher 36(2), 55-72.

 

Directions in Education, Education Policy and Politics, Engaging Learning Environments, Inclusive Education, Teacher, Adult and Higher Education, Uncategorized

Conceptual analysis for decolonising Australia’s learning futures: Implications for education

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Professor Michael (מיכאל) Singh (ਸਿੰਘ)

Bionote

A postmonolingual teacher-researcher, Professor Singh’s work focuses on extending and deepening teacher education students’ literacy skills through using their full repertoire of languages-and-knowledge; equipping them to meet the demands of teaching Australia’s multilingual students, and increasing their confidence in the added value postmonolingual skills provide graduating teachers. He enjoys watching movies that make postmonolingual practices visible, such Bastille Day and The Great Wall (长城), and the xenolinguistics of Arrived. Having an interest in polyglot programming he is able to write, incorrectly in 11 languages, “I am not a terrorist.”

Re: Conceptualising learning futures

The concepts we use in education are important. Concepts express educational values, assign status to the students with whom we work, and provide the basis for rules for governing the moral enterprise that is education.

Now and then, it is important to pause in our busy working-life to think critically about the concepts we use in education. Against the technologically driven speeding up of education, it is desirable to slow down, to contemplate if some concepts have accumulated unwarranted baggage that poses risks we might have overlooked.

Currently, I am using the method of concept analysis (Walker & Avant, 2005) in a project that is exploring ways of making better use multilingual students’ repertoire of languages-and-knowledge (Singh, 2019).

Concept analysis provides a framework that educators can use to analyse existing labels related to our working-life so as to develop guidelines for leading students’ learning futures. Findings from my research employing this method are presented below (Singh, 2017; 2018).

The aim of this conceptual analysis was to determine how the concept of ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) was constructed and is interpreted in education.

In determining the defining attributes of CALD, the intellectual roots for this concept can be located in the sociological theory of labelling. Where diversity is framed as a social pathology it is equated with deviance, and standing as against the stability of the prevailing cultural-linguistic order in education.

Adusei-Asante and Adibi (2018) indicate that CALD is attributed to students who are framed as problems. They ‘fail’ to meet the requirements of the cultural-linguistic order because they have limited proficiency in a particular version of English.

A historical antecedent for CALD is Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act 1901 which prohibited the educational use of languages from beyond Europe in Australia’s colleges, schools and universities. The dictation test in Section 3(a) of the Act was designed to be failed by persons who spoke languages originating outside Europe and thereby to exclude them and their languages from Australia.

In the 1970s the concept ‘Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) was applied to persons in Australia who spoke languages originating from elsewhere than Europe. However, this concept proved inappropriate for measuring linguistic diversity, overly simplistic in its approach to providing educational services, neglectful of the intellectual value of students’ linguistic diversity, and loaded with negative connotations. In its Standards for Statistics on Cultural and Language Diversity (McLennan, 1999) the Australian Bureau of Statistics stated that this concept and related terms should be avoided.

Consequently, CALD began to be used. CALD drew attention to students’ cultural-linguistic characteristics, did not label them based on what they are not, and enhanced professionalisation of those working in this field.

However, CALD is now a borderline concept because it has taken on the negative connotations of NESB (Adusei-Asante & Adibi, 2018).

CALD is now associated with the negative portrayal of students as learning problems. Further, CALD marks students as having the inability to relate to the prevailing cultural-linguistic expectations of Australian educational institutions. Specifically, CALD is the category for students having difficulty with writing in English; some are said to have no hope of learning English outside academic English literacy programs.

What are the implications of this conceptual analysis for decolonising Australia’s learning futures?

First, Australian educators who speak languages from multilingual Ghana and Iran (e.g. Adusei-Asante & Adibi, 2018), are contributing to the transformational leadership required for decolonising Australia’s learning futures.

Second, from time-to-time it is necessary to question our taken-for-granted use of concepts to explore the challenges they present, rather than treat them uncritically.

Third, to provide more precision in educational terminology there is a need for multiple concepts, rather than looking for a single concept to replace NESB or CALD.

Fourth, the century-old prohibition on the using languages from outside Europe for knowledge production and dissemination in Australia’s colleges, schools and universities must be reversed.

To illustrate the possibilities for postmonolingual education and research let us briefly consider concepts related to International Women’s Day (8th March 2019). To add educational value to the capabilities of students who speak English and Zhōngwén (中文) they could make meaning of issues relating to ‘thinking equal, building smart, innovating for change by:

  1. thinking marriage equality through Li Tingting (李婷婷) and Li Maizi (李麦子).
  2. using the cross-sociolinguistic sound similarities of Mǐ Tù (米兔) to explore what it means for sexual harassment regulations.
  3. building knowledge in METALS — mathematics, engineering, technologies, arts, language and science — through using the concept chìjiǎo lǜshī (赤脚律师) for critical thinking
  4. building research smarts through theorising population policy using the concept of shèngnǚ (剩女)

Slowing down to decolonise Australia’s learning futures reminds us that a source of educational knowledge is internal to student-teacher themselves and is to be found in their repertoire of languages-and-knowledge.

 

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the Decolonising Learning Futures: Postmonolingual Education and Research Research Cohort for their feedback on this post.

References

Adusei-Asante, K., & Adibi, H. (2018). The ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’ (CALD) label: A critique using African migrants as exemplar. The Australasian Review of African Studies, 39(2), 74-94.

McLennan, W. (1999). Standards for Statistics on Cultural and Language Diversity. Canberra, Australia: Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Singh, M. (2017). Post-monolingual research methodology: Multilingual researchers democratizing theorizing and doctoral education. Education Sciences, 7(1), 28.

Walker, L. & Avant, K. (2005). The Strategies of Theory Construction in Nursing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Inclusive Education, Teacher, Adult and Higher Education

Improving PNG teacher training to advance inclusive education for students with disabilities

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By Katrina Barker and Danielle Tracey

One of the advantages of working at Western Sydney University in the School of Education is the opportunity to make a difference both locally and internationally to improving educational practice. As part of an Australia Awards Fellowship and in partnership with the Kokoda Track Foundation and the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Department of Education, Dr Danielle Tracey and Dr Katrina Barker have been working to develop the capabilities of 10 Fellows working in leadership positions in the Papua New Guinea education system. Their goal, to promote inclusive education within the Teacher College programs and schools across Papua New Guinea.

Inclusive education refers to the removal of barriers to education and increased participation of all children in schooling. In the PNG context, less than 2% of children who start Year 1 will continue through to Year 12. The school completion statistics for girls and children with disabilities are significantly worse given they are out of school more than their peers. To help meet the Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD), Papua New Guinea ‘s Universal Basic Education Plan 2010-2019 identifies that Special Education lecturers require professional development to strengthen their training offered at Teacher’s Colleges. This will ensure all children are affirmed the right to an education that advocates inclusiveness. Building the capacity of teachers to include children with disabilities in education will directly assist people with disabilities to participate, find pathways out of poverty and realise their full potential.

Australia has made significant advances to policy and practice in inclusive education. At Western Sydney University we have a team of leading academics who teach and research in this field for the purpose of ensuring best practice is translated across education settings. A vehicle which facilitates the driving of best practice is the Master of Inclusive Education. Advancing the quality of life and learning outcomes for individuals with additional needs requires specialists who not only hold the necessary knowledge, but possess skills and dispositions to work in a manner that builds the capacity of individuals with additional needs, their families and those working with them.

Drawing upon the expertise of both teaching and researching team members, 10 Papua New Guinea educators visited the School of Education to develop: knowledge and skills in how to structure College programs that include pre-service teachers; observe and critique pedagogy and curriculum used within Australian Universities and schools to promote inclusive education; critique policy and procedures within the education field in PNG; and develop skills in conducting research to support implementing changes following the Fellowship.

Danielle and Katrina have been privileged to work with the Fellows to educate them on best practice (universal design for learning and person-centred framework) for inclusive education and facilitate them to develop College and school (context-driven) policies and procedures. A key outcome of this project will be improving teacher educator quality and students’ College course experience and in-service teachers’ professional development courses, with the revitalisation of their inclusive education curriculum, policies and pedagogy.

Australia Awards Fellowships funded by the Australian Government build capacity and strengthen partnerships between Australian organisations and partner organisations in eligible developing countries in support of key development and foreign affairs priorities. By providing short-term study, research and professional development opportunities in Australia, mid-career professionals and emerging leaders can tap into Australian expertise, gaining valuable skills and knowledge.

 

Dr Katrina Barker and Dr Danielle Tracey are academics in the School of Education at Western Sydney University, Australia.