Andy Hancock & Jonathan Hancock, Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES), University of Edinburgh.

As part of the Scottish Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all mainstream schools closed from 20 March 2020. As schools rapidly adapted to delivering remote learning and teaching, so too did complementary schools, teaching community languages to a significant number of children and young people in the evenings and at the weekend (Hancock, 2020). Although mainstream schools returned to elements of face-to-face teaching in Scotland between August and December 2020, complementary school sites still remained closed because of COVID-19 access restrictions to mainstream school premises and community centres. Previous research had already shown the many challenges faced by complementary schools such as unsustainable funding, lack of professional development for teachers and limited access to technological resources (Hancock & Hancock, 2018). The research outlined in this paper is based on national data gathered from an online questionnaire (n=34) and interviews (n=13) with representatives of complementary schools in order to capture evidence about remote learning and teaching during school site closure. Data covers 19 different community languages – Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Urdu, Polish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Bengali, Danish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Punjabi, Spanish. We describe the transition to remote learning and teaching; the choice of digital tools used for effective learning at home; learner engagement before and after lockdown; the challenges faced, and any benefits of the interim solutions initiated to meet the needs of multilingual learners. The research sheds light on the agency of complementary school leaders and the capricious nature of sector. The presentation concludes with recommendations to help inform how the teaching of community languages can be supported in the future within the context of Scotland’s national and ambitious 1+2 Language Strategy.

References

Hancock, A. (2020) Inclusive practices for pupils with English as an additional language. In Arshad, R., Wrigley, T. and Pratt, L. (Eds.), Social Justice Re-Examined: Dilemmas and Solutions for the Classroom Teacher 2nd Edition (pp.122-134). London: UCL Institute of Education Press.

Hancock, A. & Hancock, J. (2018) Extending the 1+2 Language Strategy: Complementary schools and their role in heritage language learning in Scotland. CERES/University of Edinburgh.

Karen Garlan and Tianqi Wu
Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE)
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Community language schools (CLS) are a worldwide phenomenon, running with little funding and generally staffed by volunteer teachers. In Australia, over 150,000 students at CLS are taught by some 7000 teachers. These volunteers often have little experience of teaching, especially in the Australian context. The majority are women and have tertiary qualifications mainly from overseas. The teaching is often the first step back into further study or employment.

To address the needs of the teachers in CLS the Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE) developed a series of educational programs that enable community language teachers to better understand how children learn, how they develop language, and how best to teach it. The focus of this study is on the 60 hour Community Languages Teaching Program – Foundation. As a result of Covid 19 this program has been delivered online for two years.

Teacher satisfaction with the Foundation Program is gauged through completion of an anonymous survey. The survey consists of 16 multiple choice and 7 free response questions. In 2019 the surveys were completed and collected in class or depending on the location of the CLS teachers, on-line. The surveys for 2020 and 2021 were completed entirely on-line. Survey data was analysed using an online survey platform.

Survey data for 2019, 2020 and 2021 was overwhelmingly positive with more than 70% of participants selecting Strongly Agree or Agree when asked about their increased understanding of language pedagogies. Key findings show that teachers believe they have developed skills in understanding student needs, in teaching and classroom management and in creating authentic teaching resources and activities.

These findings are important because for many teachers it is their first professional learning in Australia. They indicate that it is possible to meet the needs of a very linguistically and educationally diverse group of teachers. They also show that building on the teachers’ cultural and linguistic skills supports their ability to deal with online teaching in the Australian context. This presentation sheds light on emerging themes in community languages education including the need for teacher training in an increasingly digitalised context.

Dr. Greg Dickson
Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation/Australian National University

In the Northern Territory, Kriol is now the second-most widely spoken language after English. Apart from a lone bilingual program that ended over twenty years ago (Meehan 2017), Kriol has rarely featured in formal education (Angelo 2021: 296, Dickson 2021). In 2018, a community survey in one of the largest Kriol-speaking communities, Ngukurr, found strong support for bilingual education and Kriol literacy instruction (Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation 2019: 12).

In the face of the hegemony of English instruction in schools, Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation decided to fund a Kriol resourcing and education program in 2019 called Meigim Kriol Strongbala (https://meigimkriolstrongbala.org.au/en_au/). Within a year, this non-government program had become enmeshed in the local school, delivering programs in all classes. The rapid acceptance highlighted the local need and desires for vernacular education and how the funding and policy vacuum can be quickly filled at the local level when opportunities arise.

In terms of program delivery, the past two years of work by Meigim Kriol Strongbala, in collaboration with Ngukurr School and other agencies, has seen numerous innovations and developments in resourcing and pedagogy for the Kriol language. This includes: commercial book publications, development of units in primary education in various subject areas and explorations in methods of Kriol literacy instruction. Examples of success (as well as failures) across these areas will be shared in this presentation, with evidence for success provided by: improved capacity in Kriol literacy; positive formal independent evaluation (Ninti One 2021); and increased engagement and acceptance of Kriol-medium education programs. While some teachers and schools in other Kriol speaking communities are also expanding their use of Kriol in classrooms, this presentation aims to further develop a grassroots movement towards the expanded use of Kriol in formal education.

References

Angelo, Denise. 2021. Creoles, education and policy. In Umberto Ansaldo & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 88-1-5. Routledge: New York. 286-301.

Dickson, Greg. 2021. Kriol. In Claire Bowern (ed.), Oxford Guide to Australian Languages. Forthcoming.

Meehan, Dorothy. 2017. Starting Out at Bamyili: Factors Specific to the Development of the Kriol Program. In Brian Devlin, Samantha Disbray & Nancy Devlin (eds.) History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory: People, Programs and Policies. Springer: Singapore. 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_6

Ninti One. 2021. Measuring Local Change in Ngukurr: Community impacts from the Stronger Communities for Children Program. Forthcoming.

Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation. 2019. Ngukurr Progress Report. Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation.

Transnational migrants simultaneously “maintain and shed cultural repertoires and identities” (Levitt and Schiller (2004: 1013) within and beyond the national boundaries. They belong to both homeland and host country through social networks and sociocultural practices including language and custom. Accordingly, developing and maintaining children’s heritage/community language and culture is expected to be particularly important for transnational linguistic minority families to maintain such simultaneous existence. Yet, unlike commonly held assumptions by general linguistic majorities, heritage/community language, especially its literacy, is difficult to develop and maintain in a minority context, even if both parents speak the language at home. Some, however, manage to develop and maintain not only the spoken form, but also the written form of the language. How and why do they manage? Based on the analysis of the questionnaire and semi-structured interview data obtained from a group of transnational and transcultural Japanese youth and their mothers in Sydney, this paper explains the new concept “Heritage [/Community] Language Networks of Practice” (Oriyama, 2021) and discusses how they contributed to the youth’s heritage/community language development and maintenance as well as cultural identity construction.

Elizabeth Wang, Languages Teacher, Hurstville Public School

Languages should be taught in a fun and interactive way that integrates with rich tasks and 4C (Communication, Creative thinking, Collaboration and Critical reflection) activities. This workshop will provide teachers with innovative ideas in designing a unit of work, in particular, exploring the idea of learning to learn. This workshop will unpack a range of 4Cs activities and rich tasks to support language and cultural teaching and learning in the classroom. Participants will be able to reflect on their current teaching practice to improve capacity in building students with skills for a successful future.

Anna (Ania) Gruszczynska – School of Education, Durham University, UK

Research into heritage language maintenance rarely explores the consequences that studying and using parents’ first languages can have on children and young adults as they navigate their identities, belonging, and heritage positioning in contexts that perceive them as minorities. This is especially true when we take into account consequences that go beyond considerations of language as a communicative tool. This contribution draws on two qualitative studies conducted in the UK. One that examined Polish immigrant parents in an English city and their approaches (i.e. decision making and practices) to their children’s language education (Gruszczynska, 2019). And the other one that included immigrant-background young adults (aged 18-29) from a range of ethnic and economic backgrounds from across the UK and used narrative methodologies to investigate the role of the heritage language in their formulations of their sense of belonging. The paper aims to bring attention to the many cultural, symbolic, and socio-spatial distinctions that shape the heterogeneity of immigrants’ experiences and determine their relationship with their heritage languages. It also promotes recognition of language as a lived experience and an ever-present symbol of status, difference, expectations, identity, and heritage that plays an important part in immigrant-background individuals’ journeys towards belonging.

In this workshop, Sherry Chen will share her journey on supporting and promoting language and literacy development among EAL/D (English as an additional language or dialect) students.

The workshop begins with a discussion of the diverse linguistic development and characteristics among today’s early childhood population and the importance of strong learning opportunities in the early years.

Next, Sherry reflects on the complexities of literacy development for EAL/D students in her teaching practice and introduces a bilingual approach that she has initiated at Kambala School in Sydney, where the EAL/D teacher introduces storybooks and concepts in bilingual instructions which are then reinforced in the mainstream class.

To conclude, Sherry outlines the strategies for instruction to best meet EAL/D students’ learning needs. She shares how she works closely with her colleagues to enhance and improve family partnerships that promote EAL/D students’ literacy development.

This bilingual approach is built based on scientific evidence-based research from Cognitive Load Theory and Social Constructivism. These theoretical views provide practical implications, including explicit teaching and scaffolding falling within an individual’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). It is intended that by maintaining and developing the students’ home language, it transfers to their learning in English.

The approach recognizes EAL/D students’ individual learning strengths and needs. It explores interdisciplinary learning opportunities and uncover creative ways to move students forward in their literacy learning journey. The approach also addresses an urgent priority in the early years of schooling – from narrowing the achievement gap to building inclusive school communities.

Sara Ganassin, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University UK. sara.ganassin@ncl.ac.uk

Migrant and minority communities in different parts of the world have dedicated resources to setting up schools that provide children with learning opportunities designed to maintain diverse and often underrepresented heritages and languages. Community language schools are sites, not only where migrant and minority languages and cultures are taught to new generations, but where discourses of language and culture are used to foster a sense of identity (Creese, 2009; He, 2006; Li & Wu, 2009).

This paper offers insights from a monograph on Chinese community education in the UK (Ganassin, 2020). The study draws on a social constructivist ethnographic framework to investigate the joint construction of language (primarily but not exclusively Mandarin), Chinese culture and identity in two schools. It adopts a ‘bricolage’ approach that brings together a range of theoretical perspectives from applied linguistics, social-psychology, and sociolinguistics (Kincheloe et al., 2017).

Findings from thematic analysis demonstrate the value that community education has for pupils, parents and teachers in terms of identity construction, social capital (e.g. provision of community spaces for families), economic and cultural capital (e.g. enabling pupils to access future opportunities). By focusing on the intercultural dimension of community schooling, the paper argues that interculturality does not exclusively pertain to the relationships between ‘the Chinese’ and ‘the non-Chinese’ but exists within the Chinese communities as adults and children bring with them different understandings of ‘being Chinese’.

The paper challenges homogenous and stereotypical constructions of ‘Chineseness’ that have often been supported by academic and media attention. It also provides an understanding of the importance of the schools not only for the communities that are involved in them but also for the wider host society. The topics that the paper explores are relevant to current debates migration, and migrant education and inclusion.

References

Creese, A. (2009). Building on young people’s linguistic and cultural continuity: Complementary schools in the United Kingdom. Theory into Practice, 48, 267-273.

Ganassin, S. (2020). Language, culture and identity in two Chinese community schools. More than one way of being Chinese? Multilingual Matters.

He, A. W. (2006). Towards an identity theory of the development of Chinese as a heritage language. Heritage Language Journal, 4(1), Fall, 1-28

Li, W., & Wu, C. J. (2009). Polite Chinese children revisited: Creativity and the use of codeswitching in the Chinese complementary school classroom. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 12(2), 193-211.

Kincheloe, J. L., McLaren, P., Steinberg, S. R., & Monzó, L. (2017). Critical pedagogy and qualitative research: Advancing the bricolage. In N. K. 345 Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (5th ed.) (pp. 235-260). Sage.

Anthony Thorpe – School of Education, University of Roehampton, London, UK.

This presentation focuses on the leadership of heritage, complementary and community languages schools including some of the professional challenges that complementary school leaders face and how they deal with them. Existing research suggests these schools are meeting important educational, social and cultural needs for children and young people and their families, which have implications for education policy, social justice and community cohesion. However, little is known about how these schools are led and the practice of leadership within them. The issues and challenges confronting these schools are sometimes similar to those for mainstream state and private school leaders but there are significant differences in the context as these schools tend to be financially fragile due to a lack of resources in education systems which affords little recognition to their work and contribution to society. Many are staffed by volunteers leading them vulnerable in terms of staff recruitment and turnover. Some do not survive the departure of the school leader. There are worries that the imposition of regulations and inspections may affect the freedom of the schools and will negatively impact on educational diversity. This presentation includes some of the professional challenges that complementary school leaders face and how they deal with them is a call for more research and school partnerships as well as other support for schools and the practice of leadership in them.

Chorng Wei Leu – Curriculum Co-ordinator, Secondary College of Languages

Chinese is the main language after English in NSW and Chinese speakers make up 25% of all students in Community Language schools. The schools rely largely on volunteer teachers who do not necessarily have experience in Australian schools, and they tend not to be familiar with Australian curriculum and teaching. In order to support these Chinese Community School teachers, in 2019, ten PL workshops were organised in different locations in NSW and attended by more than 350 teachers in Community Language and day schools. The aim of these workshops was to familiarise teachers with the NSW curriculum and approaches to programming and planning, including the selection of effective teaching and learning resources.

Data for this presentation come from the evaluations and comments by teachers from the workshops. The key findings were that:

1. Professional Learning needs to be in Chinese to be effective;
2. Teachers would like to have more Professional Learning, including workshops and courses;
3. Teachers would like to have more support from day schools, including teaching resources and sharing of teaching strategies; and
4. Teachers would like to be familiar with the new K-10 Chinese and HSC Chinese in Context Syllabuses.

This presentation discusses a chapter from an anthology on community language education in Australia (Cruickshank, forthcoming). It presents a narrative analysis of interviews with two teachers, Nguyet and Tai, who work in a community language school teaching Vietnamese. The study explores how Nguyet and Tai describe their journeys into and purposes for teaching at the school by analysing how they and others are represented in their reflections. Excerpts from the interviews are presented using poetic transcription, which are well-suited for narratives that express existential and emotional experiences (Ahlgren, 2021). The analysis reveals how Nguyet and Tai’s expressed experiences of isolation and disconnection in a broader context, contrast with their descriptions of involvement and connection with the local community when joining the Vietnamese community language school. Social and ideological factors, including the migration experience, educational structures and the monolingual mindset emerge as salient factors that shape the identities that Tai and Nguyet perform in the interviews. Their narratives shed light on the complex identity work performed by a category of teachers that is under-represented in the literature, revealing their on-going commitment to developing communication, knowledge of culture and multilingual identity within families and communities in Australia that speak languages in addition to English at home.

Ahlgren, K. (2021). Poetic representations of migration narratives: A process of writing nearby. Journal of Sociolinguistics, (April), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12493

Cruickshank, K. (forthcoming). Community Language Schools in Australia (preliminary title). Multilingual Matters.

Branavie Raajasingam & Janarthan Kumarakuruparan

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the delivery of Tamil language education across Australia. Similar to other community language schools, Tamil schools have also had to migrate from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. It has been a steep learning curve for teachers, students, parents, and school committees. Everyone has had to work together to ensure that schools can continue to run successfully. Consequently, everyone’s roles and responsibilities have evolved. During the lockdowns in Sydney, Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE) Tamil project officers conducted 6 online teaching workshops in 2020, and 2 online teaching workshops in 2021, which was attended by a total of 132 Tamil teachers across Australia. Information was gathered via workshop surveys, written and oral feedback from teachers and observations of teaching.

The key findings were that the workshops equipped teachers with not only the technical skills required to use online tools for teaching, but also provided them with confidence to use technology to continue their passion to teach Tamil. Beyond learning how to teach online, the workshops also allowed for collaboration amongst teachers within schools, across schools, across states and internationally. Whilst the pandemic has had an enormous impact on our daily lives, a silver lining to the COVID19 pandemic has been the positive impacts it has had on revolutionising teaching Tamil in Australia. This presentation aims to highlight the positives, challenges, benefits of workshops, and the long terms impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic on teaching Tamil in Australia. It has been identified that an integrated model of teaching may reap more benefits when teaching and learning Tamil in the future.

Sarah Benjamin

The current COVID-19 pandemic has presented educators at all levels of schooling with the challenge of converting face-to-face instruction to online learning. Teachers adapt their practice to teach remotely and develop their knowledge and expertise in online tools and technologies. Past efforts to enact educational change, especially the adoption of technology in the classroom, have had mixed results. Let’s outline frequent barriers to successful pedagogical change and contrasts these with observations of positive change strategies in moving to online learning. This presentation concludes that strong institutional support for the development of technical skills, coupled with collegial sharing and building on current practices, leads to a sense of agency among instructors and a greater willingness to embrace change.

Keywords: Prior learning, educational change, online learning, technology in education, communities of practice

Paraskevi Triantafyllopoulou & Aikaterini-Katerina Vetsikas

Although Greek community languages schools have been operating in Australia for over 120 years there has been little engagement or sharing between schools. This presentation describes a two-year project in which teachers developed collaboration and updated their skills and resources. This occurred through a process of gaining trust of the schools and providing targeted professional learning in Greek. The evidence is drawn from workshop evaluations and feedback from teachers. The outcomes have been greater alignment of the schools with government curriculum, shifting beyond textbooks to using and making more appropriate resources and bringing together community language and mainstream schools across Australia. Schools are also now more in touch with recent developments in Greece concerning the teaching of Greek as a second language.

Elena Tretyachenko PhD, Russian Teacher, Chatswood Saturday school of community languages

The following proposal focuses on the practical aspect of Assessment task 2 that took place during Term 2, 2021 at Saturday School of Community languages. Russian language learners of both Stage 4 and 5 participated in the combined project “Our School”.

This proposal covers all the stages of the project preparation: initial student-focused discussion to inform future planning, task distribution, planning, class orientation, research, practise, consultations, presentation and reflection. Students used their critical and creative thinking skills, background knowledge, analytical skills, research and organisational skills.

The project started with a couple of real-life hook questions – Do you have your own vision of what a perfect school might look like? Are you interested in establishing your own school? Students were then given the roles of educational experts and invited to participate in a Round table discussion to share their vision of a New School. To become true experts students had to access, collate and examine information from various sources on education, world best practices, modern methods of teaching and school life of students in Russia and Australia.

The final step of the project included joint Newsletter writing in the form a snowball which was also used as a reflection and a method to collect feedback.

Fatma F.S. Said – Zayed University, UAE

This sociolinguistic paper describes the role heritage or supplementary schools play in the transmission of Arabic as a minority language in the UK (Szczepek Reed et al, 2020a, 2020b; 2017). Heritage language schools are often misunderstood as enclaves of isolation from society or as centres in which a parallel reality is taught (Said, 2018; Kyriacou et al, 2017). This paper is based on data collected in the UK over a period of 12 months in which the researchers went to a number of Arabic heritage schools to understand their roles and functions in the UK society. Data was collected through observations and video recording of Arabic lessons, interviews with teachers and students as well as headteachers.

Findings suggest that school leaders and parents want to support children’s heritage and offer them an opportunity to embrace their background as a way to form strong identities thereby also becoming effective members of society. School leaders work closely with local authority bodies and their respective local communities through invitations to the schools and training of their staff to the highest levels to ensure safeguarding as well as advanced teaching and classroom management skills. Annual Arabic cultural or religious festivals organised by the schools are open to the general public and local community thus making Arabic culture and language more visible.

Arabic teachers face the challenge of delivering classes in engaging ways that would make the learning of Arabic both easier and accessible to students. Students report that these schools act to support their bilingual identities and normalise the use of Arabic outside their homes. Students view Arabic as more than a language that connects them to their religion but also as an asset that will open international and employment doors for them in the future.

Kyriacou, C., Szczepek Reed, B., Said, F., & Davies, I. (2017). British Muslim university students’ perceptions of Prevent and its impact on their sense of identity. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 12(2), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197916688918

Said, F. (2018). Discourses of Multilingualism, Identity and Belonging: The View of Arabic Bilinguals in the UK. JSSE – Journal of Social Science Education, 17(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.4119/jsse-1095

Szczepek Reed, B. B., Said, F., & Davies, I. (2017). Heritage schools: A lens through which we may better understand citizenship and citizenship education. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 12(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl.12.1.67_1

Szczepek Reed, B., Davies, I., Said, F., Bengsch, G., & Sally, J. (2020). Arabic Schools and the Promotion of Fundamental British Values: A Community’s Ambitions for Consensual Diversity. British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(6), 713–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1713297

Szczepek Reed, B., Said, F., Davies, I., & Bengsch, G. (2020). Arabic complementary schools in England: Language and Fundamental British Values. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 33(1), 50–65.

In this presentation I will discuss the activity of language planning in light of social change to citizenship, learning, work and identity in an interconnected world. I will invite us to reflect on and think differently about how we understand language, communication and multilingualism. To do this I will introduce the concept of the Dominant Language Constellation, DLC, (Lo Bianco and Aronin, 2020) which asks us to move beyond both monolingualism and bilingualism and develop a new understanding of communication as a constellation of salient languages in the lives of communities and individuals. With these suggestions from language planning (how we shape language futures) and the DLCs I will reflect on how we think about community and heritage language education as much more than complementary to schools, and deeper than integration with their programs. If we reflect on how communication is being transformed today we can imagine a new and much richer future for providers of community language maintenance. I will suggest that what in fact we are doing is transforming the very nature of schooling and communication. We should discuss with students in community language schools their communication lives, virtual and actual, and the multiple communication systems they use everyday. If we invite young people to assist us in the vision and planning of their language learning we might go beyond how education ministries and departmetns can accommodate minority language communiites in existing educational processes and structures to a set of deeper changes about learning, work, and identity in an interacting world.

Lo Bianco, J. and Aronin, L., (2020), Dominant Language Constellations: A Perspective on Present-day Multilingualism. Dordrecht, NL: Springer.

Anna Mikhaylova – University of Queensland

The study reported in the paper aims to identify areas of differences and overlaps in profiles of heritage/community/home language (HL) learners and foreign language learners studying the same language in mixed university classrooms. The study is a conceptual replication of Carreira and Kagan’s (2011) large-scale survey of tertiary HL learners in the US. Despite the considerable amount of work done by Clyne and others at secondary level in Australia, there is still a paucity of research and policy in Australia regarding maintenance and (re)learning of HL at tertiary level as well as rate and route of HL development. We conducted a large-scale school-wide survey to students who are enrolled in language programs offered in a large urban university in Australia. Our first goal was to find out the characteristics and issues that are shared among HL learners across languages and those that are language specific. Unlike Carreira and Kagan’s survey, this survey was open to all language learners in the school, not exclusively HL learners studying their HL language. Thus, our data on students studying their HL are contrasted with profiles of bi/multilingually raised learners studying languages to which they were not exposed in childhood as well as monolingually raised learners of foreign languages. Questions include those on specific language competencies and practices, language education history as well as questions on motivation, attitudes, and interaction with the community. The paper will present preliminary findings of the survey showing the nuanced composite linguistic profile of learners in the LOTE programs and discuss suggestions for further research and teaching practice.

Carreira, M., & Kagan, O. (2011). The results of the National Heritage Language Survey: Implications for teaching, curriculum design, and professional development. Foreign language annals, 44(1), 40-64.

Hongzhi Yang and Hui-Zhong Shen
Sydney School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney

This research investigated Australian community languages school (CLS) teachers’ emerging pedagogical habitus, focussing specifically on key dynamics effecting the adaptation in their pedagogical understanding and practice. Based on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, this paper focused on CLS teachers’ pedagogical habitus, referring to a layer of a teachers’ primary habitus formed in the new teaching field through the instructional or related choices they have made consciously or subconsciously when accepting, resisting, compromising, accommodating and/or embracing the educational norms and practices in the new context. Following an interview-based case study design, the research analyzed in detail major factors and their interplay that had impacted the development of an expanding pedagogical habitus of three overseas-trained CLS teachers. Findings indicated that the teachers’ pedagogical habitus could have been shaped by their overall experience and understanding of the diverse contexts. The prior experience of the participants and their new learning from the professional development programs could help enhance and effect a change in their pedagogical habitus in a new educational context. A related finding was that teachers’ varied prior experiences and expertise may have determined the extent of their expanding pedagogical habitus in that it enriched (or inhabited) their instructional repertoires, through a process of engagement, reflection, negotiation and integration in a new context. Implications for teacher professional development were also considered.

This paper has been published and the reference is

Hongzhi Yang & Hui-Zhong Shen (2021): Community languages school teachers’ pedagogical habitus in transition: an Australian perspective, International Multilingual Research Journal, 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/19313152.2021.1911191

Anikó Hatoss and Mariann Banfi – School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales

Language development is a crucial part of children’s overall cognitive and social development. In immigrant families where parents are raising their children bilingually, there are several factors that can impede the simultaneous development of two languages and these factors can impact on children’s as well as parents’ well-being (de Houwer 2015, Piller & Gerber 2021).

This project is a work in progress and aims to explore the connections between harmonious bilingual development and parents’ and children’s well-being in immigrant families. The project aims to explore parental strategies in enhancing their children’s use of their minority language (Hungarian) in the family domain and beyond. The study aims to shed light on the interconnectedness of parents’ and children’s well-being and successful intergenerational language maintenance; to collect empirical discursive data on parents’ evaluation of their children’s linguistic development; to explore parental attitudes towards the development of biliteracy in pre-school and stage 1 of primary school age (4-9), and to identify language use-related factors which lead to family conflict (e.g. sites of struggle). Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and an online survey.

This study has broader implications for the relationships between bilingual parenting and the socio-emotional well-being of both parents and children in immigrant families.

References

De Houwer, A. (2015). “Harmonious bilingual development: young families’ well-being in language contact situations.” International Journal of Bilingualism 19: 169-184.

Piller, I. and L. Gerber (2021). “Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 24(5): 622-635.

Research report for Collier Charitable Fund: Education Grant

Jacqueline D’warte, Western Sydney University and Katherine Rushton, University of Sydney

This report details a mixed method study of Pre-Service Teachers’ (PSTs) Linguistic ‘Funds of Knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992). This study, conducted in metropolitan Australian universities was funded by an Education grant from the Collier Charitable Foundation. The study sought to investigate PSTs across four urban university sites in Sydney, interruptions resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic, restricted access to participants across the four university sites. This report centres on the analysis of data collected from PSTs at predominantly two universities, Western Sydney University and the University of Sydney. Data includes surveys, individual interviews and individual language maps created by participants (D’warte, 2014). This study explores Pre-Service Teachers’ views of their own linguistic ‘Funds of Knowledge’. It considers how participants see their linguistic strengths, knowledge and experience translating into teaching and investigates the relationship between the university’s institutional practices and Pre-Service Teachers’ views of their own linguistic knowledge.

Findings reveal a view of participants’ multilingual, multimodal worlds and the ways they used language and literacies to navigate their local and global contexts. Evidence reveals rich linguistic repertoires and wide-spread creativity and linguistic flexibility. While PSTs saw their language skills and understandings as assets, they were not at the forefront of their developing identities as teachers. Most often participants’ responses indicated little if any awareness of inherent linguistic or cognitive knowledge derived from their ability to make meaning in two or more languages. Few participants revealed an awareness of the connections between developing language and literacy in English and their own knowledge of another language or semiotic system. Most common, was the view that their linguistic knowledge and skill translated into teaching as an ability to be empathic, open and respectful of diversity, participants saw themselves as culturally and linguistically aware and therefore able to support student well-being. Most participants suggested that few if any opportunities were offered for them to reflect on their language knowledge and skill across the university or within their teaching program.

This small-scale study reveals that Initial Teacher Education programs are failing to capitalise on the rich resources of Pre-Service Teachers. Further research is needed to illuminate the ways plurilingual students and teachers can interact and negotiate their linguistic knowledges across contexts. We are mindful of the crucial and pressing need for new forms of applied knowledge on how educational sectors can actively capitalise on the multilingual capabilities of the Australian population.

Coreena Allen, Language Officer, Department of Education, NSW

When students have a fixed mindset about learning they often feel disengaged and lack confidence, leading to a decline in participation in learning activities and learning outcomes. Self-reflection is a powerful way to enhance a student’s learning experience. It plays an important role in teaching students not just what to learn, but also how they learn and what they can do to improve their learning outcomes. When students engage in self-reflection, they are empowered to direct their own learning and learning with a growth mindset that is under their control and ability to change.

By incorporating tasks that require students to critically reflect on their work, processes and learning style; they are given the opportunity to identify gaps in their knowledge or skill set and achieve greater autonomy and deeper learning and metacognition.

This presentation explores the benefits of self-reflection, strategies specific to language learning to introduce and implement self reflection as a classroom routine and self-reflection tools and activities to guide students through reflection. It also reflects on the work of Ron Ritchhart, a Project Zero researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education, in creating a culture of thinking in the classroom. Specifically the 8 cultural forces that shape the culture of a learning environment, time, modelling, language, environment, interactions, routines, expectations and opportunities.

References

The 8 Forces that Shape Group Culture, Project Zero Harvard Graduate School of Education http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/cot_8ForcesThatShapeGroupCulture.pdf

Susan Oguro (PhD), Honorary A/Professor International Studies and Education, UTS

For children attending community language schools, parents/carers naturally have a key role to play through their interactions and encouragement of their children language development. Parents/carers who are speakers of the community language can provide children with rich opportunities for communication to support their learning. In addition, parents/carers who do not speak the community language also play a role in influencing their children’s attitudes and motivation to learn. This paper will explore the various roles of parents (whether speakers of the community language or not) in supporting children’s language development. It draws on research which collected the experiences of parents of children attending Japanese community language schools in Sydney. It will showcase issues and practical strategies relevant to all language communities.

Ekta Chanana – Darcy Road Public School and IABBV Hindi School, Thornleigh

Various ways in which culture could be introduced in the classroom through festivals, various in class and interschool competitions, in school exhibitions, celebrating in the community with the elderly, taking the students to the Consulate to celebrate the cultural events. Check out how culture could be embedded in young minds whilst they learn their language in the classrooms.

Different play way activities and board games in which language could be taught.

“If you read a text for a hundred times, you can understand the meaning automatically”.

“书读百遍，其义自见”

Jinqi Xu, PhD, Interdisciplinary Lecturer, Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor – Education, Enterprise & Engagement, University of Sydney, Australia

There is an ongoing debate in the Higher Education sector about Chinese students’ learning regarding the central importance of memorization in their learning process (Gu et al., 2010; Marton, Hounsell, & Entwistle, 1997; Tan, 2011; Turner, 2013; Wu, 2015). Many criticise the stereotyping and simplifying of Chinese students’ use of memorization as deficient, rote learning (Biggs, 1996; Marton et al., 1996 Volet et al. 1995), but these views persist. Chinese students’ learning styles are more subtle and complex than they appear (Xu, 2019). Scholars suggest possible trajectories for such a reappraisal of this phenomenon (Jiang & Smith, 2009; McMahon, 2011; Ryan, 2010).

By adopting a practice-based approach, this paper investigates what doings, sayings and relatings (Schatzki, 2019) are in memorization and how it becomes embodied through long term repetitive practices. With Nicolini’s (2013) practice methodology, this study entails a practical package of theories and methods that are used to study students’ memorizing practice. This methodology removes the distinction between theory and method developing a flexible approach that uses different but relevant theories and methods to address the complexity of memorization (Nicolini, 2013). Ethnographic methods were used to collect data over 18 months identifying the practices used by students and investigate how these practices relate to their learning experience.

This paper adds to the body of literature that rejects oversimplified views of memorization and argues that the sociocultural and educational embedded memorising is the performance of a complex bundle of practices of the bodily doings and sayings, materially mediated (Schatzki, 2019). Memorizing is emergent to the students’ bodily repertoire learned through practices from childhood (Reich & Hager, 2014). This paper contests Plato’s ideas of resemblance but drawing upon Deleuze’s concept of repetition (Deleuze, 1994) to advocate that that repetition is not just repeating identity but is a process where new meanings are generated.

Chair:
Dr Criss Jones Diaz, Western Sydney University

Discussant
Dr Mojgan Mokhatebi Ardakani, Western Sydney University

Abstract
Australia is one of the most diverse multicultural/multilingual nation states in the world with more than 300 languages spoken in the community, with an estimated 6.8 million overseas-born inhabitants, representing 35% of Australia’s population (ABS, 2016) and with over 21% of children five years and older who speak a language other than English at home. (ABS, 2016). Despite this rich cultural and linguistic diversity, Australia is lagging behind in its policies and approach to home language retention and bilingual education as evidenced in the absence of a national curriculum framework. While there is emerging evidence that suggests some early childhood and community language settings do implement informal support for preschool children, to date there is very limited state and national research documenting pedagogical practices and policies on the implementation of home language and early bilingual education for children from birth – 5 years (Jones Díaz, 2011, 2014a, 2018; Benz, 2017; Escudero, et al., 2020).

Given the backdrop of current policy and funding gaps in the provision of languages education at the pedagogical levels in the prior-to-school sector in Australia, the papers presented at this symposium will explore a range of theoretical, pedagogical, methodological and policy issues pertinent to languages education in the early years. A range of disciplinary perspectives will be examined to highlight ways in which early childhood education settings and community language schools negotiate this policy vacuum to address the linguistic and cultural assets of young multilingual children and their parents. The papers will present findings of current research which focus on pedagogical practices, family and educators’ perspectives, family language policy, children’s voices, identity negotiation, intergenerational transmission, professional development, use of resources and community engagement.

Conclusions drawn from this seminar highlight the need for further research and policy direction to inform pedagogical frameworks relevant to young children and their families in educational settings and community language schools.

Key words: Early childhood education, policy vacuum, cultural and linguistic assets, curriculum frameworks, pedagogical practices.

Paper presenters:
Dr Criss Jones Diaz, Western Sydney University
Dr Beatriz Cardona, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney
Dr Mojgan Mokhatebi Ardarkani, Western Sydney University

Abstract
In 2019 in Australia, there were over 7.5 million overseas-born inhabitants, representing 29.7% of the population (ABS, 2020). There were more than 300 languages spoken at home with over 21% speaking a language other than English at home, with even higher numbers in large urban centres (ABS, 2016). Much of Australia’s super-diversity is apparent in the cultural and linguistic repertoires of children growing up in bi/multilingual families and communities in both urbanised and linguistically diverse highly urbanised and periurban communities (Jones Díaz, 2018). Ideally, this super-diverse reality should lead to an active practice of government policy which favours multilingualism, but this has hardly been the case especially in the early childhood education (ECE) where there remains a gross lack of investment, policy guidelines and pedagogical support to promoting and extending young children multilingual potential in ECE (Jones Diaz, Cardona & Escudero, in review). Furthermore, given the increasing recognition of the importance of home language (HL) and bi/multilingual support to children intellectual, linguistic, family connections, cultural wellbeing and identity negotiation, ECE and Community Language (CL) schools represent important sites where bi/multilingualism and HL support approaches can be effectively facilitated.

Using data collected from studies in two ECE settings and four Persian CL schools that implemented bilingual support and CL programs, families’ and educators’ perspectives on bi/multilingualism and HL support are examined. The findings draw on socio-critical and cultural theory (Bourdieu, 1991, Bhabha 1994, Hall 1996) to critically analyse educators’ reflections on their settings’ pedagogical practices and family experiences of their children’s maintenance and use of their HL at the setting. Issues highlighted reveal that current gaps in policy and pedagogical approaches to languages learning in Australia have a strong impact on the effectiveness of languages teaching and learning outcomes in ECE and CL Schools.

Key words: Early childhood education, policy vacuum, curriculum frameworks, pedagogical practices, socio-critical and cultural theory

Presenter:
Dr Angel Chan, PhD, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract:
New Zealand has a large population of immigrants, 27.4% of its residents were born overseas, and the country is home to more than 160 languages (Statistics New Zealand, 2019). The enrolment of Chinese children in early childhood education (ECE) settings has increased significantly over the years. These children are likely to use English as an Additional Language (EAL). The New Zealand early childhood curriculum promotes many language discourses, including embracing children’s home languages in ECE settings (Ministry of Education, 2017). Previous research suggests that children with an EAL background should be encouraged to use home language at home and ECE settings (Podmore et al., 2016).

This presentation will use findings from a qualitative study to illustrate nuanced relationships between dominant language discourses in New Zealand ECE and Chinese immigrant families’ aspirations for children’s language learning. The study analysed institutional documents to identify language discourses promoted in New Zealand ECE. It also used individual interviews with a group of Chinese immigrant parents to investigate their aspirations for home language retention and children’s bilingual learning. The two data sets revealed (mis)alignments between institutional and parental aspirations. This presentation will use theoretical constructs of social spaces to highlight complex relations between public and private spaces concerning the role of home language and bilingual learning in New Zealand ECE and the importance of developing policies and pedagogies that support interactions and learning across the two spaces.

Keywords: Bilingual learning; Chinese immigrants; early childhood education; home language; social spaces

References:

Ministry of Education. (2017). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō nga mokopuna o Aotearoa. https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/Te-Whariki-Early-Childhood-Curriculum-ENG-Web.pdf

Podmore, V. N., Hedges, H., Keegan, P. J., & Harvey, N. (Eds.). (2016). Teachers voyaging in plurilingual seas: Young children learning through more than one language. NZCER.

Statistics New Zealand. (2019). New Zealand’s population reflects growing diversity. https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealands-population-reflects-growing-diversity

Rosti Vana, Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics, Sam Houston State University

Experts generally agree that specialized courses for Spanish heritage language (SHL) leaners are necessary to serve their socio affective, linguistic, and educational needs more effectively (Beaudrie, 2009, 2012). However, the vast majority of SHL leaners in the US educational context share a classroom space with second language (L2) learners due to insufficient program/department resources, to a lack of awareness among administrators, to low SHL learner enrollment etc. (Carreira 2016; Carreira & Kagan, 2018). Mixed SHL/L2 courses have become a focal point of SHL research in recent years due to the lack of empirical classroom-based research as well as practical real-world teaching materials, pedagogical approach, and curriculum. As such, mixed courses are problematic for SHL learners because they are often indistinguishable from L2 courses (Carreira, 2016) and often fail to implement key instructional principles that are vital to providing a quality educational experience. Specifically, our presentation centers on the crucial need to instill SHL learners with positive attitudes toward their own varieties of Spanish and, most importantly, toward HL maintenance; a core element of SHL education that is often absent from mixed class curriculum.

This presentation will review recent classroom-based research that demonstrates the various ways that mixed courses promote and reinforce dominant ideologies regarding SHL learners and the Spanish they speak (Leeman & Serafini, 2016; Loza, 2019; Randolph, 2017; Vana, 2020). We will focus on how such ideologies become operationalized and localized within mixed classroom practices by reviewing ethnographic data that exemplifies the unequitable treatment of SHL learners. We provide suggestions on how language programs with mixed classrooms can adopt sociolinguistic principles and critical language awareness to provide SHL learners with an equitable learning experience that promotes self-respect and SHL/L2 mutual understanding.

John Hajek, Professor of Italian Studies and Director of Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Communication (RUMACCC), School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

Doris Schüpbach, Honorary Research Fellow, Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Communication (RUMACCC), School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

In the Australian migrant context, communities differ significantly in their practical abilities to support language education and maintenance– including with respect to access and /or develop sufficient learning/literacy materials.

Not surprisingly, large and well-established communities are likely to be better equipped to manage such efforts, given they are more likely to be strongly supported by greater access to resources more generally and by the existence of well-established literacy and writing traditions in their home countries. However, other communities, especially if new and emerging, face a number of challenges in the same context, including the adequate provision of literacy materials/resources for use in the home and in the community language school classroom.

In this context the Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-cultural Communication (RUMACCC) at the University of Melbourne has for a number of years been working on the development of simple, easy to create early literacy readers for communities that want them, in particular if they are likely to have limited or no access to such materials.

In this paper we report on our experience of the process of developing, translating and producing these materials. We now have translated books in more than forty different languages. We discuss the guiding principles of our approach, meant to be: (a) as simple as possible for any community members who wish to co-produce them in their language; and (b) to address concerns about access to books in Australia and elsewhere in as many different ways as possible.

The process of developing early literacy materials is not necessarily easy, linear or straightforward with numerous issues to address, but overall the experience has been a highly positive one.

Alice Chik – Macquarie University

In many classrooms around the world, students speak multiple languages, and there is frequently no dominant language. The national language is very likely to be an additional language of the students. When community language attrition happens among the second or third generations, communities are viewed as not willing to maintain their languages. Yet, what do the younger generations actually think about language learning and multilingualism? This is a particularly urgent question for pre-service teachers, whose perspectives on multilingualism will have considerable
influence on how their students view language learning and maintenance

In this presentation, we will discuss findings from a comparative project on how pre-service teachers in Sydney and Hamburg view community languages and their relevance to their profession. Both Sydney and Hamburg are undergoing unprecedented demographic changes, and now schools in both are teaching more than 50% of students who come from home environments that speak a language or languages in addition to the national language (or the de facto language in the case of Australia). From a database of 450 responses, the findings suggest that pre-service teachers’ views on community languages, multilingualism and language learning are directly tied to prior exposure to language learning in formal education. The findings also show institutional and societal differences between Australian and German teacher education training programs. In addition, some pre-service teachers who do not come from language backgrounds other than English held biased attitudes towards multilingualism. Pre-service teachers’ awareness of multilingualism can hinder or facilitate language maintenance in the school context. The findings suggest urgent needs to include language learning and awareness training as part of the pre-service teacher education program.

Coreena Allen, Language Officer, Department of Education, NSW

When students have a fixed mindset about learning they often feel disengaged and lack confidence, leading to a decline in participation in learning activities and learning outcomes. Self-reflection is a powerful way to enhance a student’s learning experience. It plays an important role in teaching students not just what to learn, but also how they learn and what they can do to improve their learning outcomes. When students engage in self-reflection, they are empowered to direct their own learning and learning with a growth mindset that is under their control and ability to change.

By incorporating tasks that require students to critically reflect on their work, processes and learning style; they are given the opportunity to identify gaps in their knowledge or skill set and achieve greater autonomy and deeper learning and metacognition.
This presentation explores the benefits of self-reflection, strategies specific to language learning to introduce and implement self reflection as a classroom routine and self-reflection tools and activities to guide students through reflection. It also reflects on the work of Ron Ritchhart, a Project Zero researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education, in creating a culture of thinking in the classroom. Specifically the 8 cultural forces that shape the culture of a learning environment, time, modelling, language, environment, interactions, routines, expectations and opportunities.

References

The 8 Forces that Shape Group Culture, Project Zero Harvard Graduate School of Education http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/cot_8ForcesThatShapeGroupCulture.pdf

Hoa Do PhD student – La Trobe University

Despite being at the centre of discourse on language maintenance and multilingual education in Australia for some time (Nordstrom, 2020), community language schools (CLS) have only attracted scholarly attention in the last twenty years. Research on CLS as “a grassroots initiative” (Leitner, 2004:261) to maintain minority languages has focused on such issues as monoglossic language ideologies, competing beliefs and pedagogical practices, and community language teacher identity and professional development needs (Clyne, 2005; Cruickshank, Jung & Li, 2020; Liddicoat & Taylor-Leech, 2014; Nordstrom, 2020; Reath Warren, 2018). With increased interest in micro- and meso- language planning in general (Liddicoat & Taylor-Leech, 2014), there is an imperative for community- and language-specific issues to provide local responses to local needs. This is particularly true for emerging migrant communities and communities experiencing changes in their composition such as the Australian Vietnamese community.

This presentation discusses part of a project on language attitudes and maintenance among Vietnam-born migrants in Australia. Data from an online questionnaire completed by 78 respondents and semi-structured interviews with 20 parents and CLS teachers reveal insights into Vietnamese language teaching and learning in Australia. While parents and teachers both aspire to transmit Vietnamese to the next generation, there are differences in their beliefs towards the teaching and learning of Vietnamese. Regarding the language itself, parents prefer more inclusion of contemporary Vietnamese while teachers insist on a more or less exclusive use of archaic Vietnamese. Teachers’ English proficiency and pedagogic skills are another point of concern where stakeholders’ expectations and practices vary. These findings can help parents and educators in the Vietnamese community improve CLS for their children. Although community-specific, the insights gained from this research are relevant to other minority language communities in encouraging schools and parents to take agency to devise and implement changes to address local language-learning needs.

Kara Matheson, Education Officer, NSW Community Languages Schools Program Hunter Community Languages

This workshop will address the value of Concept-based learning for our Community Languages (CL) context.

What understandings do we want our CL Students to take away from their weekly 2hr lessons? Is it just about wanting them to have linguistic skills so that they can find the words to express their ideas in the target language? Do we also want them to have at least a superficial knowledge of our heritage culture – knowledge of festivals; historical events; food; lifestyle? Is this enough? Do we also want to guide our students to engage with concepts – “Big Ideas” (Wiggins, McTighe p5) – that relate to our CL context, which lead to deeper understandings that students can apply to their lives more broadly?

With a Concept-based curriculum we can plan for the twin goals of imparting content understanding – skills and knowledge of the target language and culture and developing students’ capacity for deep thinking. This deep, higher-order thinking is transferable, can be used by students in their day school lessons across subjects, and can contribute to bigger understandings and generalisations about how the world works.

In this workshop participants will be introduced to the Key Concepts that are pointed to in The Australian Curriculum’s Content Descriptions, and those used in the Sample Scope and Sequence of the newer NESA syllabuses.

Participants will experience an authentic task that could be used in their CL class for learning higher order thinking skills around:

Concepts: collaboration; culture; similarity and difference; expression; meaning; identity; belonging, and

Processes: listening, responding, interacting; participating; describing; comparing; reflecting; noticing.

References

Australian Curriculum, Hindi, Foundation to Year 2 Content Descriptors. Source: https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/languages/hindi/?year=13627&strand=Communicating&strand=Understanding&capability=ignore&capability=Literacy&capability=Numeracy&capability=Information+and+Communication+Technology+%28ICT%29+Capability&capability=Critical+and+Creative+Thinking&capability=Personal+and+Social+Capability&capability=Ethical+Understanding&capability=Intercultural+Understanding&priority=ignore&priority=Aboriginal+and+Torres+Strait+Islander+Histories+and+Cultures&priority=Asia+and+Australia%E2%80%99s+Engagement+with+Asia&priority=Sustainability&elaborations=true&elaborations=false&scotterms=false&isFirstPageLoad=false Accessed 4/7/2021

Education Standards Authority NSW, Persian K-10 Sample Scope and Sequence (2019). Source: https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/languages/persian-k-10-2019
Accessed 4/7/2021

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J., Understanding by Design 2nd Edition (2005). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA.

Jessica Zhang, Hanwen Chinese Education and Culture.

1. Why do we use picture books?

• • No suitable textbooks
  • Picture books are interesting; everybody likes stories.
  • Language in picture books is mostly related to daily life. Students can learn languages that can be used every day.
  • There are repeated words and language patterns in the story that makes learning a new language easy.

2. What picture books do we use?

Picture Books written by Eric Carle

The very hungry caterpillar / Today is Monday / Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? / From head to toe/ Do you want to be my friend? / Where are you going? To see my friends

Picture Books written by Eric Hill

Spot can count / Where is Spot? / Who is there Spot? / Spot goes to the Farm / Spot’s Christmas / Spot goes to school

Picture Books written by Jackie French

Wombat goes to school / Wombat Wins / Grandma Wombat

Picture Books written by Anthony Brown

Our Girl / My Dad / My Mum / My brother

Others

3. How to teach with Picture books? Using” The Very Hungry Caterpillar” as an example

What can students learn through this story?

Counting numbers from 1 – 10 / Days of a week in Chinese / fruit names / health eating / evolution of a caterpillar to a butterfly / sentence pattern: 星期……它吃了……但是它还是很饿

4. How do you teach?

1. 1. Story-telling
   2. Learn counting numbers from 1 – 10: finger dance
   3. Learn days of a week in Chinese
   4. Learn fruit names: Bingo / Snake and letters / Tic Tac Toe
   5. Craft and learn: caterpillar / butterfly / leaves / cocoon
   6. Students retell the story with graph

Authors:
Kerry Taylor-Leech, Griffith University
Eseta Tualaulelei, University of Southern Queensland

The local government area of Logan has Queensland’s third highest proportion of people born overseas, and Samoan is the most common language other than English spoken at home (Department of Local Government, Racing and Multicultural Affairs, 2018). Yet, the Australian Early Development Census 2015 identified that 32% of children in Logan commencing their first year of full-time school were considered vulnerable in one or more key areas of early childhood development. To encourage Samoan parents to enrol their children in early childhood education, a community collaborative established a Samoan-immersion programme (a’oga amata) within an already established early learning centre in 2018. This presentation reports on a seven-month ethnographic study which captured the lived experience of Samoan children, families and educators involved in the Amataga Lelei A’oga.

Using a range of qualitative methods including talanoa, observations, photos and video recordings, we explored the extent to which the a’oga amata was meeting its aims to support heritage language and culture. Using Conteh and Brock’s (2011) idea of safe spaces for young bilingual learners as a framework, we present our findings about the multiple benefits of the aoga amata for children, caregivers and their communities specifically in terms of translanguaging practices and bilingual/bicultural identity development. We also identify challenges to this aoga amata’s impact and long-term sustainability which were voiced by the community and observed. Some implications for policy and practice in similar early childcare settings are discussed such as the need to improve the availability of human and cultural resources, the value of intentional teaching of culture and language and the importance of working closely with families and communities. Our presentation also contributes to broader discussions about Australian early childhood education and care, and whether existing policies and curricular spaces promote the establishment of programmes, like the a’oga amata, that privilege children, their families and community aspirations.

References

Conteh, J. & Brock, A. (2011). ‘Safe spaces’? Sites of bilingualism for young learners in home, school and community. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14, 3, 347-360.

Department of Local Government, Racing and Multicultural Affairs. (2018). Diversity figures June 2018. https://www.cyjma.qld.gov.au/resources/dcsyw/multicultural-affairs/multicultural-communities/diversity-figures-report-2018.pdf

Marie Quinn, University of Technology

This paper explores issues around the resources of first languages to support the development of oral language and literacy. Typically, language and literacy activity start with song, language-accompanied movement, stories and books – language that presents engaging rhyme, wordplay and repetition – that can be captured for more explicit attention in a learning setting, the “sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhymes” as identified by what the current Early years learning framework for Australia (2009). However, not all languages use rhyme as a linguistic structure in young children’s language play, which then leads to the question: What other resources that make language engaging might the early childhood educator capitalise upon in building competent communicators?

The material for this presentation emerges from an ECE setting in a culture that does not use rhyme in word play. It will preview the planned investigation into what makes language fun in this particular language setting, suggesting how educators in the Australian setting might explore languages they use with young children, to help connect everyday word play to further language development. Such reflection explores how we might answer the question posed by the Educators Guide (2010): “What do you know about the language/s that the children bring with them?” (p. 28)

Commonwealth of Australia. (2009). Early years learning framework for Australia. (updated, 2019)

Commonwealth of Australia. (2010). Educators’ guide to the early years learning framework for Australia.

Van Tran, Sarah Verdon, Sharynne McLeod
Charles Sturt University

Paper Abstract

Home language maintenance is a challenge to multilingual families in Australia. While government’s support in terms of policy and resources is limited, home language maintenance is greatly dependent on parents’ efforts. Informed by Spolsky’s language policy theory, this paper explored Vietnamese-Australian families’ experience of successful home language maintenance in three aspects including language practices, language ideologies, and language management. Seven parents from five families whose children achieved high bilingual proficiency scores in the speech and language assessment of the VietSpeech research program were invited to participate in a focus group to discuss successful strategies for home language maintenance. The discussion was undertaken in Vietnamese. Thematic analysis of the bilingual transcription revealed four themes: motivations, challenges, practices, and recommendations for home language maintenance support. The parents’ motivations for home language maintenance included communication with grandparents and relatives, maintenance of cultural identity, parents’ need to speak their home language, and the cognitive and emotional benefits. The challenges faced by the families were related to children starting school and growing older, parents’ lack of time and persistence, and insufficient support in terms of formal Vietnamese education, resources, and teacher quality. The families’ strategies for successful language maintenance included speaking Vietnamese all the time, teaching Vietnamese directly using textbooks and indirectly through regular activities including book reading, daily interactions, and watching Vietnamese TV. The parents’ recommendations focused on changes in language education policy and advocacy, better resources, and raising public awareness of the importance of home language maintenance. This paper highlights the need for changes in government’s language policy and high quality community level support to facilitate home language maintenance in Australia.

Presenters:
Paola Escudero^1,2, Gloria Pino Escobar^1,2, John Hajek^2,3 & Gillian Wigglesworth^2,3
1Western Sydney University, ²ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, ³University of Melbourne

Abstract
Home language (HL) use in the community has a myriad of benefits for children’s identity, well-being, lifespan bilingualism, and enhanced language and literacy skills [1,2,3]. However, many multilingual families have little or no support for promoting HL use outside their homes, resulting in recessive bilingualism from early childhood [2,4]. We propose a practical solution with our Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) program, which provides HL extension and foreign language learning during the early, formative years, using evidence-based principles, structure and guidelines. It operates in close partnership with established early childhood settings, such as early learning centres, preschools, or playgroups. Our approach involves a) in-depth knowledge of the setting’s language use and children’s skills, b) needs assessment and co-designing of a tailor-made program, and c) play-based, thematic, and individualized learning.

For our first partner, a bilingual preschool in Sydney, we observed that despite a commitment to bilingualism, the HL was used more with toddlers than with older preschoolers, where more English was used in preparation for formal schooling [3]. We also found that many preschoolers had comparable English skills to monolingual children, while being dominant in their HL. To promote children’s identity, well-being and HL maintenance after preschool, we co-designed an LMM program delivered in the HL to support literacy and numeracy skills, on par with readiness for school. Within the first five weeks, most children not only demonstrated emerging HL literacy and numeracy but also more confidence and independence than in their readiness for school sessions conducted in English. Longitudinal evaluation is ongoing, with similar success for the HL and English expected. We conclude with our plans for nation- and world-wide partnerships to foster multilingualism from the ground up, starting in the early years, for it to become the norm and a pathway to social inclusion and diversity.

Keywords: multilingualism support, early childhood education, partnership with settings, co-designing, play-based and thematic learning

Maya Cranitch AM, Australian Catholic University, Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education, University of Sydney
Elizabeth Makris, Sydney Institute for Community Languages, University of Sydney

Research data from the Skills in Question (2018) confirms that the overwhelming majority (87%) of Community Language teachers have overseas tertiary qualifications and 79% of those would like to teach in the formal school system.

Community language teachers face obstacles in navigating a path to accreditation (Guo & Singh, 2009). The process of assessing qualifications, finding out what the options are either for a direct approach to NESA or admission to a University course is extremely complex. Studies from Europe suggest that complex bureaucratic processes are the result of devaluing overseas knowledge and experience (Economou, 2021, Kayser, Vock, & Wojciechowicz, 2021)

In order to address some of these obstacles, SICLE formed partnerships with Western Sydney University (WSU) and Australian Catholic University (ACU) and introduced a program to provide targeted support for access to Master of Teaching programs . A significant aspect of SICLE’s Pathway Master of Teaching program is an initial information session which explains the policies of key institutions such as NESA and the admission criteria required by University Education courses. This is followed up by an interview with a careers adviser and an academic to explore possible pathways towards achieving individual goals.

Evidence from surveys and interviews conducted as part of a collaborative research project between SICLE, WSU and ACU strongly suggests that without the support of such personalised advice, many teachers would simply give up. The data from this research also provides valuable information about what changes in policy and institutional structures are necessary in order to recruit highly qualified Community Language teachers from diverse backgrounds with the special language skills which best reflect and serve multicultural Australia.

Cruickshank, K., Ellsmore, M., Brownlee,P., ( 2018). The Skills in Question: Report on the professional learning strengths and needs of teachers in NSW Community Language Schools. University of Sydney – Sydney Institute of Community Languages, Education, SICLE, Sydney

Economou, C. (2021) A Fast-Track course for newly arrived immigrant teachers in Sweden, Teaching Education, 32:2, 208-223, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2019.1696294

Guo, W. and Singh, M. (2009). Overseas Trained Teachers in Australia: A Study of Barriers, Skills and Qualifications. AARE Conference paper.

Kayser, D., Vock , M., & Wojciechowicz, A. (2021) Example of best practice: refugee teachers at the University of Potsdam. A requalification program for newly arrived teachers in Germany, Intercultural Education, 32:1, 108-118, DOI: 10.1080/14675986.2021.1851513

Ying Liu PhD candidate, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sydney

Motivation is one of the key factors that influence language acquisition and extensive research has been done in this area. However, there has been limited research on the motivations of Chinese heritage language (HL) learners in Australian universities. This paper fills this gap and aims to present the results of a study that draws on the internal structure model of language learning motivation (Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005). Ninety Chinese HL learners enrolled in Australian universities participated in a questionnaire survey and 10 learners joined a focused interview. The results indicate that culture, Chinese heritage and ethnic identity are major motivational factors influencing Chinese HL learning. In addition, parental home language practices and strategies, including interactions in Chinese at home and return visits to the home country, also play an important role in motivating Chinese HL learners. These findings have meaningful pedagogical implications for Chinese HL teachers and learners in Australia.
Keywords: motivations, beliefs, Chinese heritage language (HL) learners, Australian universities

References

Csizér K., & Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The internal structure of language learning motivation and its relationship with language choice and learning effort. The Modern Language Journal, 89, 19-36.

Jacqueline D’warte, Associate Professor – School of Education, Western Sydney University

An increasingly diverse educational landscape has prompted scholars and educational practitioners to consider how languages and literacies teaching and learning can be reimagined in order to disrupt rather than sustain a monolingual orientation (Schalley, Guillemin & Eisenchlas, 2015). New pedagogical practices are being developed that perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the project of schooling (Paris & Alim, 2017). In this workshop, I share research that engaged culturally and linguistically diverse young people and their teachers in Western Sydney classrooms in being researchers of students’ linguistic repertoires. Students studied the ways they were reading writing, talking listening and viewing in one or more languages inside and outside of school as part of regular classroom practice.

This workshop will focus on language mapping (D’warte, 2012; 2014) a methodological and pedagogical strategy that requires participants to make a visual representation of their linguistic worlds. This strategy enabled students to be reflexive about the individual and collective linguistic, communicative and semiotic resources they employed in their everyday worlds and make explicit links between their home languages and English. Evidence suggests this work was engaging for both teachers and students and involved students in complex authentic tasks that addressed across curriculum outcomes, enhanced their learning and increased their confidence. This work also facilitated community involvement and promoted community languages learning.

D’warte, J. (2014). Exploring linguistic repertoires: Multiple language use and multimodal activity in five classrooms. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(1), 21-30.

Eisenchlas, S., Schalley, A., and Guillemin D (2015) Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies. International Journal of Multilingualism 12(2),151–161.

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

Frances Lee, Instructional Leader

In the workshop I will introduce the pedagogy and research by Hattie and Marzano about high impact teaching strategies (HITS), there research show by setting high expectation in a positive learning environment students will thrive and progress from where they are at. After a short presentation I will launch into the practical element of the workshop. The learning objective of the workshop is to learn how to use green screen technology in teaching program to create an authentic and rich learning task that differentiates to all abilities. I will walk participants through how to create a program that incorporates the technology and a 101crash course on how to use green screen technology.

Approximately 80% of community language teachers have tertiary qualifications from overseas. For most, converting these qualifications into an accredited Australian teaching degree is not a simple process. One pathway to achieving an accredited degree is through a Master of Teaching program currently offered in partnership with Sydney Institute for Community Language Education (SICLE), Western Sydney University (WSU) and the Australian Catholic University (ACU).  This unique partnership has been in place for three years and although student aspirations at commencement are high, little is known about their their preparedness for their first teaching practicum Australian classrooms. To address this gap in literature, semi-structured interviews are being conducted with students currently undertaking the Master of Teaching  (n = unknown) through the use of videoconferencing software-Zoom.  The interviews aimed to explore notions of how prepared they feel for the Practicum, how they feel the Community Language Teaching (CLT) experience has assisted them to be prepared and how much they know about teaching in Australia. The interviews will be recorded during zooms verbatim and transcribed.  Qualitative thematic analysis will be applied to the written transcriptions to identify emergent themes. This presentation will discuss the results of the student interviews, analysis of the themes that they shared and explored as well as the limitations, recommendations for future research, and implications of the study for policymaking.

Janet Dutton, Lecturer, Secondary English Curriculum, Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University
Kathy Rushton, Lecturer, Sydney School of Education, University of Sydney

This ethno-graphic, multi-site case study explores the use of the translanguaging space (Li Wei, 2017) in confirming identity and student agency and developing a creative pedagogy (Dutton & Rushton, 2018). Artefacts, which included reflections on the strategies teachers employed in their classrooms, were offered at key junctures in their work. These offered insights into how the translanguaging space can be used to support English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) students from low socio-economic backgrounds to develop and use all their linguistic and cultural resources. The production of Identity texts (Cummins & Early, 2011; Cummins, Hu, Markus & Montero, 2015) which may be oral, written or multimodal texts that connect to the students’ community, informed the teachers’ changes in pedagogy. These texts disrupt a transmission pedagogy that views the student as a blank slate (Freire,1975). By producing Identity texts in the translanguaging space, students are able to choose which language or languages they will use “as a multilingual, multisemiotic, multisensory, and multimodal resource that human beings use for thinking and for communicating thought” (Li Wei, p. 25).

Paper proposal for Research stream

Presenters: Phil Benson and James Forrest (Macquarie University)

Abstract

Sociolinguists have identified a number of factors that may contribute to variable rates of heritage language maintenance (Clyne, 2003). Community language schools clearly contribute, but is there are relationship between the number of schools/students and rates of language maintenance. This presentation begins with some surprising data on heritage language maintenance in Australia. It is often assumed that migrants’ languages are lost by the third generation. However, a recent analysis of Australian Census data shows that rates of third generation language maintenance vary considerably (Forrest, Benson & Siciliano, 2019). For some languages the rates of maintenance are as low as 1 per cent (e.g. Dutch and German), while for others they are above 60 per cent (e.g. Vietnamese). Ten non-European languages have third generation maintenance rates of 30 per cent or above. This reflects a tendency towards higher maintenance rates among non-European languages and lower rates among European languages. This exploratory study explores relationships between this language maintenance data and data on the number of language schools/students in NSW (Chik, Benson, Forrest & Falloon, 2019), focusing on languages with high and low rates of language maintenance. For languages with high maintenance rates it also looks at the geographical locations of schools and third generation speakers. It concludes that community language education is one of thecontributory factors in language maintenance and identifies a number of questions to be followed up in more intensive case study research.

References

Chik, A., Benson, P., Forrest, J., & Falloon, G. (2019). What are languages worth? Community languages for the future of New South Wales. Sydney: Macquarie University Multilingualism Research Group and NSW Federation of Community Language Schools.

Clyne, M. (2003). Dynamics of language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Forrest, J., Benson, P., & Siciliano, F. (2019). Multicultural but increasingly monolingual? Linguistic shift and heritage language retention in Australia. In S. Brunn (ed.), The changing world language map. New York: Springer.

Dr Sue Ollerhead (Macquarie University) & Dr Gill Pennington

This paper presents some initial findings from a pilot research study that investigated the impact of a multilingual storytelling project involving young plurilingual children in years K-2 in a mainstream public school. The project aimed to promote the children’s language and literacy development in both English and in their home languages. It also aimed to involve children’s families by inviting them to share their funds of knowledge for language and literacy learning.

Data was collected in five phases. Semi-structured teacher interviews were followed by staff professional learning on the value of recognising home languages and family funds of knowledge: teachers were introduced to interactive storybook reading based on culturally relevant stories told in both home languages and in English. Throughout the first semester, students in a Stage 1 classroom engaged in multilingual storytelling as a foundation for literacy and language learning, culminating in a rich task: a class book on family mealtimes and favourite food written by students and translated into their home languages. The final phases involved parent interviews and follow up interviews with teachers to determine any change in their understandings of the role of home languages and cultures in classroom learning.

This presentation will outline progress of the study to date, concluding with a summary of initial findings and a discussion of possible future directions for study.

Cremin, T., Flewitt, R., Mardell, B., & Swann, J. (Eds.). (2017). Storytelling in early childhood: Enriching language, literacy and classroom culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Garcia, O. (2009). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell.

Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into practice, 31(2), 132-141.

Dr. Tina Sharpe & Maya Cranitch AM – Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education

Recent research has identified an absence of overseas-born teachers in schools and also of overseas-born students in preservice teacher education, a factor which does not reflect the diversity of the student population in schools; this problem exists in most OECD countries (Bartlett, 2013; Bense, 2016; Cruickshank 2004; Miller, 2019) To address this issue a large scale project involving upgrading pre-service teacher and other support programs and counselling, funded by the New South Wales Department of Education, was implemented.

This paper addresses findings from a collaborative research study between the University of Sydney, Western Sydney University and ACU that followed mature-age internationally-educated migrants, many of whom are volunteer teachers in the community languages schools, as they undertook the pathway of becoming a teacher in Australia. The teachers in the study had been supported by the Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education (SICLE) to gain access to a Master of Teaching program which is reported on in another paper at this conference. The focus of this paper is their perceptions of how the WSU institutional structures, curriculum content and teaching support in the Master of Teaching program meets their needs. The data includes online surveys, focus group and individual interviews of teachers in the program and interviews of all relevant support staff involved in the project.

A key finding is that, even though these teachers are able to successfully participate in course content, institutional structures create significant challenges that impact on their family and work responsibilities and levels of stress. Many of these challenges are shared by domestic mature-age part-time students, but lack of experience with the Australian education system has added an additional layer of complexity for these individuals aspiring to be teachers.

References:

Bartlett, L. (2013). Migrant teachers: How American schools import labor, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Bense, K. (2016). International teacher mobility and migration: A review and synthesis of the current empirical research and literature Educational Research Review, 17, 1, 37-49

Cruickshank, K. (2004).Towards diversity in teacher education: Teacher preparation of immigrant teachers.

Miller, P. (2019). Aspiration, career progression and overseas trained teachers in England, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 22:1, 55-68, DOI: 10.1080/13603124.2018.1503838

Reid, C., Collins, J. & Singh, M. (2014). Global Teachers, Australian Perspectives: Goodbye Mr Chips, Hello Mrs Banerjee. Springer.

Schmidt, C. (2010). Systemic Discrimination as a Barrier for Immigrant Teachers. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education (DIME).

Germana Eckert – University of Technology, Sydney

The Australian school sector reflects the diversity of Australian multiculturalism, with 36.9% of students in NSW in 2020 identified as having a language background other than English (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2021a). That percentage rises to 56.2% when focusing on those students with language backgrounds other than English in the Sydney region (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2021b). Despite these statistics, English remains dominant in much of the field of education in NSW.

This paper stems from one element of doctoral research findings regarding the hegemony of English within the field of education in NSW. The research utilises Bourdieu’s thinking tools alongside an analysis of publicly available institutional documentation pertaining to multiculturalism, language, and language practices to explore the ways in which discourses around languages and language practices within the field of education in NSW are framed.

The paper uses Fairclough’s (1992) three levels of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to move beyond an analysis of the documents’ linguistic and intertextual features, to the third level of CDA which focuses on the social effects of the language used in the documents (Fairclough, 2015). This aligns with Bourdieu’s analytical tools and enhances understandings of the power relations in the field (Bourdieu, 1982; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

The findings reveal the positioning of and attitude towards languages, diversity and multiculturalism of the main institutions and dominant agents in the field of education in NSW. In addition, the findings reveal the ways in which the dominant agents retain their dominance in the field in order to preserve the hegemonic practices of the field.

This research centres on the Australian context. However, the findings apply to similar cultural and linguistic contexts where hegemonic language practices dominate.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1982). Leçon sur la leçon [A lecture on the lecture]. Les Éditions de Minuit.

Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press.

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2021a). 2020 schools and students: statistical bulletin. https://data.cese.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/schools-and-students-statistical-bulletin/resource/16ce1fa6-442f-47db-9326-eb783b43e0e1

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2021b). 2020 LBOTE enrols by educational level and SA4 group. https://data.cese.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/enrolment-of-lbote-students-in-nsw-government-schools-by-sa4-groupings/resource/ea1a8033-a8ce-440e-809d-1aa66a7e1190

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Polity Press.

Fairclough, N. (2015). Language and power (3rd ed., updated). Routledge.

Dr Robyn Moloney

This presentation profiles a 2019-2020 SICLE initiative which brought together a group of experienced community language teachers (12 languages) in three workshops, to create units of teaching/learning using a Task Based Learning approach. Teachers designed a “rich task”, a motivating active performance (or product) of language, as the goal of a unit of work. The unit’s sequence of purposeful language acquisition and practice builds learners’ mastery and motivation on the task. Teachers collaborated in small language groups, and across groups, to create their units, delivered the unit in their classroom, and reported back to the group on the outcomes. A valuable resource portfolio of outstanding units of work is available to all through the SICLE project. The project influenced leadership capacity in CL teachers and continues to support community language teaching and learning as a site of contemporary excellence.

Beatrice Venturin – School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne

The present study examines 20 Russian-Australian 1.5ers, namely heritage speakers belonging to the 1.5 generation (Rumbaut & Ima, 1988). These speakers are childhood sequential bilinguals who, in terms of order of acquisition, learned Russian as their L1, and English as their L2, after migrating to Australia between the ages of 6 and 12. Because of their peculiarities and in-group heterogeneity, especially in terms of language proficiency and dominance (Frodesen, 2002), many scholars have insisted on considering 1.5ers as a generation per se (Benesch, 2008; Rumbaut, 2004). In fact, they are usually L2-dominant (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001), while their L1 competence may vary considerably, although this language is often attrited (Remennick, 2017).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants and underwent qualitative thematic analyses. From the results it emerges that these participants still feel a strong bond with their heritage language, Russian, which maintains a high emotional resonance, although most of them feel more proficient in English, the language they are educated in. The majority also manifested the desire to pass on the heritage language to their children, although they acknowledged their frustration due to the inability to express themselves fully in this language. Lack of full competence
in the heritage language also generates identity conflicts, as well as the desire to reconnect with this language and the L1 community (Venturin, 2019).

This study contributes to the understanding of a neglected generation of heritage speakers, the 1.5 generation, and reconfirms their liminal status (Huang, Yeoh, & Lam, 2008). It also has pedagogical implications for the Australian education system, which does not invest enough resources in heritage language maintenance (Lo Bianco, 2009). An increase in heritage language programmes would be extremely beneficial, especially for 1.5ers, whose proficiency in the heritage language is generally higher than for second or further migrant generations.

REFERENCES:

Benesch, S. (2008). “Generation 1.5” and its discourses of partiality: A critical analysis. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 7(3-4), 294-311.

Frodesen, J. (2002). At What Price Success?: The Academic Writing Development of a Generation 1.5 “Latecomer”. The CATESOL Journal, 14(1), 191-206.

Huang, S., Yeoh, B. S., & Lam, T. (2008). Asian transnational families in transition: The liminality of simultaneity. International Migration, 46(4), 3-13.

Lo Bianco, J. (2009). Second Languages and Australian Schooling. Australian Education Review No. 54. Australian Council for Educational Research.

Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2001). Legacies: The Story of The Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Remennick, L. (2017). Generation 1.5 of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and in Germany. In L. Isurin& C. M. Riehl (Eds.), Integration, Identity and Language Maintenance in Young Immigrants: Russian Germans or German Russians (pp. 69-98). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing.

Rumbaut, R. G. (2004). Ages, life stages, and generational cohorts: Decomposing the immigrant first and second generations in the United States. International migration review, 38(3), 1160-1205.

Rumbaut, R. G., & Ima, K. (1988). The Adaptation of Southeast Asian Refugee Youth: A Comparative Study. Final report to the Office of Resettlement. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Family Support Administration, Washington, D.C. [ERIC Document Service Reproduction Service No. ED 299 372].

Venturin, B. (2019). “I Don’t Fit in Here and I Don’t Fit in There:” Understanding the Connections between L1 Attrition and Feelings of Identity in 1.5 Generation Russian Australians. Heritage Language Journal, 16(2), 238-268.

Kanu Priya Tandon, Girraween Public School.

In the globalised world and multicultural society that we live in, it is almost necessary for a learner to have language competencies to ensure an overall success in life. At the same time, teaching a language is not an easy feat because each classroom has dynamic environment. Along with numerous skills, teachers must utilize effective strategies that facilitate each student to learn the language. Some challenges that language teachers face are programming for rich and significant tasks, keeping students engaged, differentiating for multileveled classroom and lack of resources.

In my proposed presentation, I will discuss practical application of sample units of work in the classroom that aligns with new language syllabus. The units of work encompass rich, significant and engaging task for the students so that they appreciate and value their own language and heritage. Backward mapping approach is the backbone of designing unit of work, where teachers plan for evidence that truly demonstrates student content mastery and student construction of knowledge (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

I will be sharing my personal lesson ideas to demonstrate how students are engaged in interacting, responding and composing language-based multimodal texts. Students are creators in the classroom and teachers take on the role of a facilitator. They need to encourage and foster creativity in students through games and play based learning experiences. Using games, songs and drama is very important in keeping students’ creativity alive.

It is crucial to have effective strategies up your sleeves to keep students engaged in language classroom because it is easy for them to give up easily. In the presentation, I will go over some effective strategies such as use of story books, games and resources that I use in my classroom with my students instead of sticking with one approach.

Reference:

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2012). Understanding ny Design Framework (Alexandria, Va.: ASCD).

Hing Wa Sit, School of Education, the University of Newcastle, Australia
Shen Chen, School of Education, the University of Newcastle, Australia
Haoliang Sun, Xin Jin Shan (XJS) Chinese Language and Culture School

This paper reports a case study jointly conducted by an Australian University, a main-stream school in the state of New South Wales and a community language school in Victoria. A current Australian educational goal emphasises school students need to be Asia literate, engaging relationships and communicating across cultures. Particularly Chinese language teaching and learning have drawn great attention from teachers and academics. However, what does it take to motivate students to learn Chinese? What are the effective pedagogical approaches and teaching practices to facilitate Chinese language teaching and learning? These questions have not been answered satisfactorily. This study explores how to develop effective pedagogical approaches to promote native English-speaking learners of Chinese in secondary schools. The study was conducted at a prestigious independent school with a history of excellence for over a century in Newcastle, NSW. This leading independent coeducational day school began to offer Chinese language program to its secondary students in 2017. Thus, this research is timely needed for investigating teaching practices for motivating secondary students to learn Chinese. A mixed qualitative method is employed in the study. Three main findings emerged: (1) the intrinsic and extrinsic factors/attitudes to Chinese language teaching and learning; (2) the effectiveness of various teaching strategies and (3) the relations between effective pedagogical approaches and maintaining positive attitudes of learning Chinese. Practical recommendations of effective strategy for motivating secondary students to learn Chinese were proposed and discussed. The study is significant in filling a gap on how to motivate monolingual English speaking Australian secondary students to learn Chinese. The research outcome should have wide implications to teaching and learning Chinese across all levels of educational institutions. It also shed lights on the teaching and learning of various Languages Other Than English (LOTE) in Australia and other English-speaking countries.

Keywords: Second Language Teacher Education; Attitudes to Community Languages; L2 Curriculum and Pedagogy; Teaching Instructions and Strategies; Language and Identities.

Dr Vicky Macleroy
Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, Goldsmiths, University of London

One of the most promising applications of digital media for language learning is digital storytelling which enables both the digital creation and sharing of stories using a range of digital tools including cameras, laptops, editing software, the World Wide Web, and online platforms (Anderson & Macleroy, 2016). This talk examines the Critical Connections Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project (2012-ongoing) from the perspective of Project-Based Language Learning and the vison for language education which this represents. Digital storytelling opens up space for experimentation, for multimodal and potentially multilingual bricolage, for expanding lifeworlds, and for developing voice (Anderson & Macleroy, 2021). A focus will be on how the Critical Connections project has been integrated into primary, secondary, and community-based complementary schools and local and global communities. A particular strength of the project is its transformative pedagogical approach developed through continuing dialogue between researchers and teachers. Tensions and challenges will be examined here and changes that happen in learners’ perceptions and attitudes towards their languages and cultures whilst creating their digital stories. Questions will be interrogated about why the project has continued to gain momentum and expand across schools and countries. What is it about the Critical Connections approach to learning that has continued to capture the interest of learners from very different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences? How has digital storytelling fostered translingual skills and local and global citizenship? The talk will conclude with emerging language debates about becoming a multilingual activist and changing the mindset of teachers and policy makers.

Anderson, J., & Macleroy, V. (Eds.). (2016). Multilingual digital storytelling: Engaging creatively and critically with literacy. Oxford: Routledge.

Anderson, J. & Macleroy, V. (2021) Stories, Communities, Voices: Revitalising Language Learning Through Digital Media within a Project-based Pedagogical Framework. In M. Thomas and K. Yamazaki (eds) Project-Based Language Learning and CALL: From Virtual Exchange to Social Justice. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd, pp 245-276.

Critical Connections website: https://goldsmithsmdst.com/

Parental engagement is a key factor in children’s school success. Its importance has increased during home-learning in the context of COVID-19 lockdowns. How do schools foster the engagement of linguistically diverse parents? How do linguistically diverse parents experience school communications? This lecture addresses these questions by providing an overview of current research on parental engagement and educational outcomes before presenting the results of two recent studies devoted to home-school communications. Findings show that schools provide little or no information in languages other than English, even if up to 98% of families speak a language other than English at home. As a result, parents with limited or no proficiency in English disengage and draw on alternative sources of information that may or may not be trustworthy. The lecture closes with policy implications for the inclusion of migrant parents in school communications with the aim to improve educational outcomes of the second generation.

Two seemingly opposite forces are shaping the future of heritage language (HL) education in the United States: institutionalization and bottom-up innovation. With respect to the first, I will examine the place of heritage languages in this country’s highly formalized system of second/foreign language education and identify strengths and weaknesses using Ekholm and Trier’s (1987) markers of institutionalization. With respect to the second, community-based heritage schools and the Open Education Movement will serve by way of example of how bottom up innovation is addressing institutional weaknesses and creating new opportunities in HL education.

This presentation will address the question of how Arabic language education can be professionalized within Australia’s community-based context, highlighting the potential community-based teaching has for mainstreaming Arabic as a world language in Australia, and discussing ways to realize this potential. I will provide a brief background on the challenges faced by Arabic language education both in the Arabic-speaking world and abroad, and outline the elements needed to professionalize the teaching of Arabic, including teacher training, curriculum development, and assessment and certification. I will argue that such efforts will not only enhance the presence of Arabic within the Australian context and contribute to the mission of “developing intergenerational linguistic and cultural understandings” here, but can also serve as a model for community-based Arabic education worldwide.

Community language learning has evolved in distinctive ways in the Australian societal and educational policy context over at least three decades in response to its migration history. Central to the rationale for such learning are the concepts of ‘language’, ‘community’, and ‘identity’. The dynamic nature of Australian migration history together with changing understandings of these concepts, call for a reimagining of community language learning. In this paper I draw upon the findings of a recent review of the community languages program undertaken in South Australia, and an accompanying curriculum development initiative to discuss some possible characteristics of community language learning that support its continued development. Throughout the discussion I will focus on sustaining learning, from the students’ point of view.

Angela Scarino and Michelle Kohler
Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, University of South Australia

Building on a systematic review of community languages in South Australia (Scarino & Kohler with Loechel 2018), in this paper we discuss aspects of a suite of collaborative research and development towards program improvement within a framework of multilingualism for all students (Ortega 2019). The work is based on a principle of differentiation that seeks to do justice to the diversity of languages and cultures, each with their distinctive migration and educational histories.

The body of work includes a curriculum framework and accompanying case studies of development in five languages, and a set of four professional learning courses that are designed to capture the developing trajectory of teacher learning within community languages programs.

All aspects of the work involve collaboration with teams of community language teachers to ensure that the development of these key resources emerged from their expertise and engagement with facilitated action research. In this way, the research process honours the teachers and their expertise while also setting an agenda for improvement.

Ortega, L. 2019. SLA and the Study of Equitable Multilingualism, The Modern Language Journal, 103 (Supplement 2019), pp. 23-38.

Scarino, A. & Kohler, M. with Loechel, K. 2018. Review of the Ethnic Schools Program of South Australia. Ethnic Schools Association of South Australia: Adelaide.

Jing Qi and Kerry Mullan
Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT

Community language schools have grown rapidly to accommodate an increasing number of learners globally. A diverse range of expectations is associated with community language schools, their roles and potential (Scarino, 2018). The role of community language teachers/instructors is a key factor in coordinating and fulfilling such expectations. However, teacher development for community languages remains under-researched and tends to underscore a deficit view of this cohort.

Drawing upon the theoretical lens of teacher funds of knowledge to contest such deficit discourses, this study argues that the distinctive form of community language education positions these schools and teachers as potential agents of innovative language education practices. Teacher funds of knowledge is defined as teachers’ personal, experience-based knowledge that they draw upon for everyday teaching practice (Hedges, 2012), and teacher beliefs and their origins in childhood experiences (Gupta, 2006). The lived and work experience of community language teachers in Victorian communities enhances the view that community language is a local practice and “a central organizing activity of social life that is acted out in specific places” (Pennycook, 2010, p.2).

This study explores how teacher funds of knowledge can be used for developing innovative language learning practices in community language schools. Data has been generated using teacher surveys, teacher journals and researcher observation with 70 community language teachers of 15 languages across Victoria. Findings show that community language teachers possess multiple domains of funds of knowledge. We discuss the multiple ways that teacher funds of knowledge have informed their teaching and make recommendations about how their funds of knowledge could be further mobilised to drive innovative community language teaching.

Michael Michell, Sydney Institute for Community Language Education

Over the last decade, learning progressions have been promoted and developed in Australia as key assessment-for-learning and teaching tools in the areas of literacy, numeracy and English language learning. Through its Passport and Progressions project, SICLE is currently developing learning progressions for specific languages with a view to strengthening the continuity and effectiveness of community languages learning and teaching for diverse language learners in NSW. This paper outlines the key design issues, considerations and frameworks in the complex development of a prototype set of language learning progressions that informs development of learning progressions for specific languages. Research on the nature and development of discipline-based learning progressions is considered along with the key language learning constructs of ‘language repertoires’ and ‘milestones’ that underpin the language progression and distinguish it from performance or standards-based language proficiency scales. The paper illustrates how first, second and heritage language acquisition and language assessment research, educational linguistics and relevant language scales have been applied to develop milestone elaborations and descriptors that reflect evidence-based, models of spoken and written language learning and key dimensions of language ability. The specific issues and challenges of learning to read in opaque orthographies of Arabic and Chinese and their implications for describing reading progressions in these languages will also be considered with particular reference to a supporting text complexity framework.

Jie Du, Canley Vale Early Learning Centre and Dr Criss Jones Diaz, Western Sydney University

In a rapidly diversified and multilingual world, more and more young children are exposed to multiple languages in their early years of life. Studies show that birth to 3 years is crucial period of child’s language acquiring (De, 2009). Simultaneous acquisition of two or more languages is normal. As educators, we recognize that ‘Children’s use of their home language underpins their sense of identity and their conceptual development… They have the right to be continuing users of their home language as well as to develop competency in Standard Australian English’ (DEEWR, 2009, p.41). We support bilingual children as they settle into the centre through our bilingual program built around their needs. Bilingual families who express their aspiration in raising bilingual children are given advice to encourage bilingual children to practice their home languages and opportunities to meet with other bilingual families. In addition to this, there is emerging research that documents parents’ interest and advocacy around these issues (Beardi-Wilshire, 2017). Being bilingual or multilingual facilitates cross-cultural communication. It is important for us to support children in their early language development by building multilingual learning environments at the early childhood settings.

This workshop will introduce and discuss how one Long Day Care Centre in South West Sydney, has has created a vibrant early years multilingual learning environment and integrated language teaching and learning methods throughout the program. We focus on using a play-based early language learning approach that facilitates children’s bilingual and multilingual repertoirs. Our culturally and linguistically inclusive curriculum promotes children’s progress towards the learning outcomes in the EYLF and the Early Stage – Stage 1 outcomes in NSW Languages K-10 syllabus (NESA, 2017). We also discuss how the setting provides educators with pedagogical practices to inform learning and working with families and educators that not only support teachers in languages teaching but support our young children’s languages learning in their early years.

References

Berardi-Wiltshire, A. (2017). Parental Ideologies and Family Language Policies among Spanish-speaking Migrants to New Zealand, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 23:3, 271-285, DOI: 10.1080/13260219.2017.1430489

De, H., A. (2009). An Introduction to Bilingual Development. Multilingual Matters. Bristol, pp. 1-14 (chapter 1: introducing the fancy term for bilingual development: BFLA).

DEEWR (2009). Being, Belonging and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Barwon, ACT: Commonwealth of Australia.

NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) K-6 Syllabus Languages Framework: https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/d4d35a4b-3647-4bb2-bcfa-ac2b5c0818fc/languages-k-10-framework-2017.PDF?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=

Xue Feng Zhang, PhD

Chinese is the main language after English spoken in NSW and Chinese CL schools enrol almost one/third of all the CL students in NSW, including an increasing number of students from diverse non-Chinese backgrounds. There is great diversity in the 1,000 volunteer Chinese teachers from highly qualified and experienced to beginners without relevant pre-service teaching qualification. Providing professional learning (PL) is made more problematic as all the CL schools tend to operate independently without much inter-school cooperation. This presentation examines the process of developing effective PL that can meet the diverse teacher needs and pedagogical approaches required for the range of learners. The data for the study includes feedback from teachers, students and parents.

The key finding is the importance of the language-specific school-based and inter-school TPL programs: workshops need to be run in Chinese and based in and relevant to the contexts of the teachers. This is because the teaching of Chinese requires a whole set of pedagogical approaches which are uniquely applicable only to the Chinese language. Based on the review and analysis of the issues and programs, this paper highlights and offers a number of recommendations for further consideration and planning.

Varsha Daithankar, IABBV Hindi School

This workshop will include PPT slides explaining the theory and some specific details about the Concept of Storytelling. Including demonstrated examples from the classroom in the form of videos/photos. This will be followed by a quick activity for teachers in classroom and handouts will be given in digital form. An exit poll/feedback form may be given for teachers to be filled. The target audience will be beginner to intermediate level teachers in Community language schools.

• Word cloud activity
• Theory behind the concept of Storytelling
• Demonstration of work samples
• Demonstration/share worksheet and resources on OPEN LANGUAGES WEBSITE

Kati Varela, Wenona School

Effective feedback has been widely recognised as being essential for improving student learning and teaching quality (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Yet, the focus of feedback is often on teachers providing it to students. This presentation intends to demonstrate how using a simple strategy to obtain feedback from students at the end of each lesson is helpful and, arguably, necessary, to best cater for the needs of the learners, while also improving the quality of the teaching. Examples of students’ responses will be shown as well as ways in which the effectiveness of the teaching and of student learning has improved as a result of using this feedback tool.

References:

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, Feedback Factsheet. Retrieved from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/feedback/aitsl-feedback-factsheet.pdf

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, Spotlight, Reframing feedback to improve teaching and learning. Retrieved from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/research-evidence/spotlight/spotlight-feedback.pdf

Hattie, J & Timperley, H, 2007, The Power of Feedback, Review of educational Research vol. 77, no. 1.

Swati Doshi, Hindi teacher-IABBV Hindi School

As a Community Language teacher, I have observed and experienced that students don’t understand and learn languages at the same pace at which
they learn other subjects due to the smaller number of teaching hours per week. Parents are usually unaware of most of the class work undertaken
during weekly lessons and are only involved in the homework activities the children are tasked with completing. I believe that involving parents and older relatives in the language learning process, will not only help students learn the language better but would also help bridge the generational gap between students and their older kin through the language. It will also aid students in cultivating an appreciation for the language they are learning and understand its importance beyond the confines of the classroom.

I involved the parents and older relatives or grandparents to help them write poem for the Yearly Poetry Recitation competition and in telling them
stories from Indian culture which can help them imbibe the moral values and learn the skill of narrating a story in language other than English. It was a win-win situation as children got help with their work and family enjoyed imparting their share of knowledge with the children.

Aim of this workshop is to share my classroom practice of involving parents and grandparents in day-to-day learning of the language.

In this session I will choose what I believe to be the most effective ICT tools for languages teaching and learning and explain how they can be used to make lessons more engaging. We will look at one tool in detail and will discuss how to use it effectively from scratch thus making lessons more enjoyable and fun.

Lindy Norris
Murdoch University

Over the past five years community languages and their schools in WA have had access to a significantly increased level of support. This has been as a result of a reengineering of language policy within the state. A four-stage development program known as Pathways to Improvement (PIP) has been designed and implemented. In addition, and in order to support schools and their staff move along the Pathway, a complementary, and comprehensive Professional Learning Program (PLP) has been delivered over a number of years.

There has been significant investment in both PIP and the PLP, and feedback and evaluation of the programs, demonstrate significant successes. There is a problem, however. Politics and politicking have undermined these initiatives and community language schools no longer have the level of support that they had grown accustomed to.

This paper will briefly explore how PIP and the PLP were taking community languages beyond being a right to being a significant resource within the Western Australian languages landscape. Lo Bianco (2017, p.43) states that “language can be thought of as culture’s temporal link, carrying the past into the present and forging the future from the here and now.” The paper will explain how Pathways to Improvement embodies this statement. It will also explain how the now diminished opportunities for the provision of professional learning are impacting program quality and the right for community members in Western Australia to effectively learn and use community languages.

References

Lo Bianco, J. 2017. Accent on the positive: Revisiting the ‘Language as Resource’ orientation for bolstering multilingualism in contemporary urban Europe. Dynamics of Linguistic Diversity, Peukert, H. & Gogolin, I. (eds) John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 31-48.

Maria Gindidis, Monash University. Melbourne
Lilly Yazdanpanah, Monash University. Melbourne

The Community Languages Australia Parent Project report is the product of a year-long online (Qualtrics) survey study conducted by Faculty of Education, Monash University and commissioned by Community Languages Australia. In this nation-wide project we researched and examined 600 parents’ views on their children studying at Community Language Schools (CLS).

Following this we embarked on a pilot study collecting data related to student voice in community schools. An enduring issue has been how teachers and policy makers act on the views of young people, and how issues raised are resolved. This study involved using recorded device responses in a qualitative data collection initiative we called “Capture” (Schober et al., 2015). The research involved completion of a recorded survey with 4 questions. The first question was demographic i.e which suburb do you live in, your age, year level and language studied. The remaining 3 questions invited students to record responses on their reason for studying their community language, how they viewed their current experience and advice to community language teachers for the future. Forty-four students aged between 12-15 participated in the pilot in two languages Greek and Chinese.

References

Schober MF, Conrad FG, Antoun C, Ehlen P, Fail S, Hupp AL, et al. (2015) Precision and Disclosure in Text and Voice Interviews on Smartphones. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0128337. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128337

Haoliang Sun, Xin Jin Shan (XJS) Chinese Language and Culture School, Australia
Hing Wa Sit, School of Education, the University of Newcastle, Australia
Shen Chen, School of Education, the University of Newcastle, Australia

This paper aims to answer a thorny question regarding community language education in both community schools and main-stream schools. How can community language schools support the teaching and learning of a second language (one of the community languages) in main-stream schools in an English-speaking country like Australia? This paper reports a joint investigation on this crucial issue by an Australian university in New South Wales and a community language school in Victoria. It has been widely accepted that one of the four priority Asian languages recommended by the Australian government, namely, Mandarin Chinese is difficult to learn, particularly, to the non-Chinese heritage background English-speaking students in Australian schools where Chinese is a subject of LOTE programs. The current situation that increasing number of Chinese heritage background learners and dramatic decreasing of non-Chinese background English-speaking learners of Chinese in main-stream schools have created an urgent task: to what extent the community language schools could provide help to motivate non-Chinese background leaners to learn Chinese.

Employing a mixed method consisting of document search and semi-structured interview, a case study has been conducted in a community school in Melbourne. The study is investigating on three major issues. The first is the resource-sharing which includes both teaching material and teachers. The second is the cultural activities and events to promote learning of Chinese language and culture. The third is special programs or individual support designed for non-Chinese background English-speaking learners of Chinese. The study is significant in filling a gap on how to motivate monolingual English speaking Australian secondary students to learn Chinese with a support from community schools. The research outcome should have shed lights on the roles of community language schools in promotion language learning with a collaboration with main-stream schools in Australia. It has also significant implication to the teaching and learning of various Languages Other Than English (LOTE) in Australia and other English-speaking countries.

Keywords: Community/ heritage languages; Community language schools; Main-stream schools.

Janica Nordstrom – Sydney School of Education and Social Work (the University of Sydney).

More than 80% of NSW’s community language schools borrow or rent a space for teaching at either a government or non-government mainstream school (Cruickshank et al., 2020). For those who use government-owned public schools, the NSW Department of Education (NSW DoE) offers free rent. However, research from around the world has highlighted that teachers who borrow a space at a mainstream school are rarely allowed to use classroom resources such as the internet, smartboards, and places for storage (Archer et al., 2009; Cruickshank et al., 2018; Tsolidis and Kostogriz 2008).

This paper reports on initial findings from a larger study aimed to explore the relationship between community language schools, mainstream schools, and state educational departments. Reporting on findings from a survey of 167 community language teachers in New South Wales, this study shows that community language schools have unequal access to resources depending on where they teach. For example, community language school teachers who borrow a room at a high school have significantly more access to educational tools and resources compared to those who borrow a classroom at a primary school. This brings to the forefront the important role mainstream principals play as meso-level actors (Liddicoat, 2020) in broader Language Policy and Planning (LPP) involving community languages. It also stresses the importance of understanding the perceptions and decision-making processes of mainstream principals around community language teaching to ensure quality teaching and equitable opportunities for schools, teachers, and students.

Archer, L., Francis, B., & Mau, A. (2009). ‘Boring and stressful’ or ‘ideal learning spaces’? Pupils’ construction of teaching and learning in Chinese supplementary schools. Research Papers in Education, 24(4), 477-497.

Cruickshank, K., Ellsmore, M., & Brownlee, P. (2018). The skills in question: Report on the professional learning strengths and needs of teachers in the NSW Community Language Schools. University of Sydney

Cruickshank, K., Jung, Y. M., & Li, E. B. (2020). Parallel lines: Community language schools and their role in growing languages and building communities. University of Sydney.

Liddicoat, A. J. (2020). Language policy and planning for language maintenance: The macro and meso levels. In A. C. Schalley & S. A. Eisenchlas (Eds.), Handbook of home language maintenance and development: Social and affective factors (pp. 337-356). De Gruyter.

Tsolidis, G., & Kostogriz, A. (2008). ‘After hours’ schools as core to the spatial politics of ‘in-betweenness’. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(3), 319-328.

Diversification of teaching force has been the key approach being adopted by English-majority countries to address the needs of ever-increasing diverse cultural and linguistic student populations. More approaches are being adopted to recruit and retrain overseas trained teachers to diversify the teaching force in Australia. One of such innovative accreditation pathways is an alternative mode of Master of Teaching programmes, offered in collaboration with Institute of Community Languages (SICLE) at the University of Sydney, Western Sydney University (WSU) and Australian Catholic University (ACU), to retrain community languages schools’ teachers. Teaching practicum is a key component that the Master of Teaching programmes adopt to bridge the theory – practice gap. Prior to their first teaching practicum, little is known about community languages teachers’ preparedness for their first teaching practicum in Australian classrooms, it is not clear what teaching competencies they expect to acquire and their views of the major concerns and challenges they might encounter in Australian classrooms. To address this gap in literature, semi-structured interviews are being conducted with community language teachers from WSU (n=20) and ACU (n=10), who are undertaking Master of Teaching programmes secondary and primary respectively, to upgrade their overseas qualifications to become teachers in NSW schools. The interview are being conducted and recorded through the use of videoconferencing software-Zoom. The interview data will be transcribed verbatim and a descriptive thematic analysis will be performed. The results of the current study, limitations, recommendations for future research, and implications of the study for policymaking will be discussed.

Key words: Master of teaching programmes, teaching practicum, expectations, concerns, challenges, preparedness, New South Wales.

The increasing influx into Australia of (im)migrants whose first language is not English has made Australia linguistically more diverse than ever. Despite this, Australia remains a strongly Anglocentric nation, and migrants, in response, tend to abandon their heritage languages (HL) and shift to English relatively quickly. Korean migrants in Australia buck this trend, as they show a relatively high level of language maintenance. The Australian Korean community, nevertheless, experiences a language shift to English among different generations, and a sharp decline in the rate of high school students enrolled in Korean community language schools. The present study expands existing accounts of HL maintenance in Australia. Specifically, drawing on interviews with six Korean-speaking children, it compares the views about the HL of primary and secondary school students. In line with language ideologies, data analysis and interpretation employ positioning theory. A key finding is that their ideologies around the HL vary by school age. The comparison also suggests that their language ideologies are associated with the domains where they practise their HL, and the ways they position themselves. The study contributes to a dynamic understanding of multilingualism and HL education in a multicultural society.

Noor Elias – Liverpool Public School.

Explicit teaching has been identified as one of the eight quality teaching practices that are known to support school improvement and enhance the learning outcomes for students (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation 2020). Hattie’s (2009) research outlines the benefits of using explicit teaching strategies in teaching. He defines explicit teaching as “The teacher decides the learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to the students, demonstrates them by modelling, evaluates if they understand what they have been told by checking for understanding, and retelling them what they have been told by tying it all together with closure.” (Hattie 2009, p. 206). Explicit teaching practices involve teachers clearly showing students what to do and how to do it, rather than having students discover or construct information for themselves (Rupley, Blair & Nichols 2009).

The department of education Literacy policy states that explicit teaching is to be included in the literacy instruction especially in teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. Thus, it is essential for community language teachers to utilise such teaching pedagogy in order to enhance the learning outcomes, support students learning and enable students to make links and transfer skills between languages and other key learning areas particularly Literacy.

The proposed workshop will focus on the use of explicit teaching practices in the community language classroom and particularly on the importance of systematic and explicit phonics instructions. In my workplace the core pedagogy for teaching phonics in the early years is the explicit teaching of synthetic phonics program. I have adapted this teaching instruction and used it in my Arabic community language classroom to support students’ learning and maximise the achievement of the outcomes. During the workshop I will be sharing the following:

• The research behind explicit teaching instruction and how it is linked to effective reading in the early years of learning.
• How I have adapted my school’s phonics scope and sequences to develop the Arabic phonics scope and sequence.
• How I utilise the Arabic scope and sequence to plan, program, assess, differentiated and identify gabs in learning.
• How I have modified the Department of Education’s phonics resources such as the power points, decodable readers and phonics games to teach Arabic phonics.
• How I utilise the phonics resources to maximise learning in my Arabic classroom.
• The overall benefits of using this approach and its implication for my students.

References

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation 2020, What works best: 2020 update, research report.

Hattie, J 2009, Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, Routledge, Oxon.

Rupley, W, Blair, R & Nicholls, W 2009, ‘Effective reading instruction for struggling readers: The role of direct/explicit teaching’, Reading & Writing Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2-3, pp. 125-138.

Kavita Sood, PhD

Hindi is the language of heart. It is adopted well by all mainly because of its popularity due to Indian music, delicious cuisine, diverse culture, colourful festivals and celebrations, Yoga and its spiritual connection. It helps in understanding family values of love, dedication, acceptance, forgiveness, respect for elders, and above all, the spirit of joint family. In reality, it provides all round development of children-parents take care of children, grandparents guide the youth; and adults take care of elders.

The purpose of this presentation is to take Hindi language in community as a path to bridge the gap between all family members, especially amongst second and third generation.

This was achieved by using the tool ‘Digital Story Telling’ in Hindi and Power Point Presentations in the classroom. This made the learners very interested and they were excited to take ahead the idea of understanding the concept of their culture and values. The class activities were followed by encouraging the communication between learners and extended family also.

The outcome was amazing in terms of HF i.e. Happiness Factor especially in these challenging times of Covid. Hindi as community language is offering not only heart to heart connection but happiness too, at times when it is much needed.

Gina Rizakos – Centre for Continuing Education

The Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) University of Sydney has been offering Modern Greek language classes since 1986. The Modern Greek language and culture courses are suitable for adults who wish to learn Greek for any reason such as travel and general interest; non-Greek background students with relationships with Greek speakers and students with Greek heritage studying for language maintenance reasons. The Beginners course is the most popular and advanced courses have been offered to Level 11.

The courses are taught using elements of the “Communicative method” with a practical application involving realistic cultural situations such as cuisine, sightseeing, music, and social occasions. The courses are not assessed.

In my presentation, I will describe how elements of communicative language teaching, or student-centred learning, are utilised together with culturally specific and relevant content in the teaching of Modern Greek to adults of varying backgrounds. I will discuss some of the challenges faced when teaching short language courses with regards to course materials, costs and more recently, the transition to teaching over remote collaboration platforms such as ZOOM.

Reflecting on practice, I will share some strategies on how to make Modern Greek teaching relevant in Australia in a positive way, to encourage learning, maintain interest and create a more inclusive environment in the classroom. It is also significant to mention economics: keeping Greek relevant AND profitable; Short courses are run to quotas and profit margins and I will briefly examine the role of marketing and media events in encouraging enrolments.

I conclude by considering possibilities. What else needs to be done to maintain and continue the Modern Greek language and the role of community and government policy both in Greece and in Australia?

Reference(s)

Krashen, Stephen D. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Pergamon Institute of English

Elke Stracke, University of Canberra
Mandy Scott, Australian National University
Meredith Box, University of Canberra

In this presentation we will consider the extent to which community language schools can be seen as bridges and the extent to which they might be better considered as separate entities with a particular role in the educational sphere.

We will base our discussion on a range of recent or current activities and developments in the ACT. These include the outcome of the Independent Review of Investment in Community Language Schools commissioned by the ACT government in 2020, a Round Table Discussion at the ACT Community Language Schools Day in May 2021, a professional development course funded through Home Affairs Second Round Funding in 2021, the Canberra Languages Network chaired by the ACT Education Directorate, and ongoing research on the role of community language schools in the development of student values.

The bridges we will consider include those between communities, cultures and identities, with particular ties to faith institutions and cultural skills learning. Also considered is the bridge between community languages and mainstream education, including English literacy and additional languages.

Dr Robyn Moloney, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University
Rev. Dr. Father Shenouda Mansour, General Secretary, NSW Ecumenical Council.

This paper presents an overview of 35 personal narratives collected, focussing on the relationship between linguistic identity and spirituality. The collection includes over 30 languages, all the major religions and Indigenous languages and spirituality. Analysis shows the strong involvement of spirituality in the motivation, maintenance and teaching of heritage/community languages, and in identity development. Participants consistently highlighted the intimacy which only their first language provides, embedded in spiritual experience. The link between linguistic identity and spirituality involves domains of community, belonging, place/displacement, and for some, a specific religious identity. Reconciliation, resilience, intercultural and ethical understanding are involved in wider personal and social outcomes for those involved. From analysis of common themes in the narratives, we present a model of how this process may contribute to Australian society. The analysis extends the scope of existing models of heritage language development (for example, the COD model, Capacity Development, Opportunity Creation, and Desire) illustrating the powerful driver that emerges, when spirituality is added. This is the first work of this nature, in the Australian multilingual context.

Community language school teachers and principals are faced with many challenges, and challenges require strategies. Communication in schools is a key element that affects the running of a community language school and greatly impacts all aspects of operations resilting in the success or even failure of successful lesson delivery. In this session we will focus on some of the main issues affecting the teaching and operations of community language schools, and strategies to help ensure the smooth running of classes and of the entire school.

In particular we will look at –

What communications strategies we can use to improve a constructive working relationship with the host school

What strategies we can employ to communicate effectively with all school stakeholders including students, parents, and the broader community and how this leads to success or failure

We will look at real cases of the sometimes enourmous benefits (both financial and other) and enourmous setbacks (financial and other) resulting from proper communication practices experienced by community language schools.

There are few ways of crediting language teacher proficiency. Despite the plethora of English language proficiency tests, there are few options in other languages except for French. SICLE was contracted by the NSW Department of Education to develop the Community Language Teacher Test (CLTT) for primary teachers wanting to apply for permanent teaching positions at the NSW department. We were also requested to develop Verification of Language Proficiency Test (VLPT) for pre-service secondary teachers needed evidence of the equivalent proficiency gained from 2/3 years undergraduate study (NESA, 2018).

This paper reports on the two types of language tests that have been performed to language teachers so far, drawing on feedback from test developers and language experts. An overview of the test structures will be given, followed by differences and similarity of the two types of tests. Test reliability and validity will be discussed, as well as the implications in developing and collecting evidence to support the tests, as well as implication for language policy makers in NSW.

Varsha Daithankar and Swati Doshi – Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education

Hindi is the 4th most spoken language in NSW and there has been a rapid growth in Hindi Schools with an increased need in teaching material suitable for 2nd and 3rd generation learners. The language school across Sydney work together in background but they are still waiting for a formal organisation under one umbrella. Teachers were working hard to make their classroom learning interesting, but unknowingly like so many other community languages they were only reinventing the Wheel.

The Hindi project officers followed a process in building networks and teachers and providing professional learning for them. They worked with schools to build trust by focusing on issues and teacher needs. They worked out solutions with teachers that were customised and individualised. They identified the differing strengths and needs of the older more established teachers and the young more-recently arrived ones. They encouraged both groups of teachers to join workshops. During the COVID shutdowns they ran many training sessions on teaching online and using apps. Teachers were encouraged to share their resources which were uploaded on to the resources portal. Once all the ingredients were there, the project officers managed to ‘cook the stew’ and get teachers working in networks to support each other within and across schools.

Lilian Fleuri

Community language schools (CLS) are ethnic organisations articulated by an immigrant community to address the need for multiculturalism and community language maintenance. Developing and implementing a CLS is a challenging collaborative work between community, families, children, teachers and CLS coordinators, which requires educational strategies specifically designed for community language teaching (Boruchowski, 2014; Carreira, 2018). In Australia, since the beginning of the 21st century, when the Brazilian immigration started, Portuguese-speaking communities have rapidly increased. Brazilian community language schools are expanding in numbers as well. Raízes Brasileiras (RB), the Brazilian CLS of QLD, has been developing and implementing a model of community-based education for teaching Portuguese as a heritage language (POLH). Through project-centered approaches, RB combines the classes with the local Brazilian community of QLD, transforming community agents into teachers and community-spaces into classrooms. This paper demonstrates how RB implements this educational model in QLD. Community-based education is described in two levels: (1) the organizational level, which is the structure and support of the community around the school development and implementation; and (2) the educational level, which describes Raizes Brasileiras’ learning projects. This model assesses students’ outcomes in regards to the evolution of their communicative skills, and to their engagement in the community.

Key-words: community language school in Australia, Brazilian diaspora, Portuguese as a heritage language, Portuguese as a community language, project-based approach, community-based education

Viet Thuy An Ngo, Lansvale Public School

OVERVIEW

This workshop will provide a wide range of resources (both hand-on and interactive online games) which are differentiated to support students’ individual learning needs. Through discussions and group activities, Primary language teachers will gain more knowledge of how students learn and develop or use appropriate resources accordingly to engage students, which ultimately will improve their learning outcomes.

Language learning can sometimes be frustrating for students and teachers as constant effort is required to understand, produce and manipulate the target language. While many researchers and experienced classroom language teachers have found strong evidences that games do improve students’ vocabulary (Nguyen & Khuat, 2003), motivation and communicative competence through interactions (Eisenchlas, Schalley & Moyes, 2016), many educators hesitate to imply this approach into their daily practices either because of time constraints, lack of resources, parents’ expectations or of the daunting out-of-controlled anxiety caused by increased noise level and misbehaviours (Brewster, Ellis & Girard, 2002).

According to Eisenchlas, Schalley and Moyes (2016), games have more advantages than disadvantages, provided that they are suitable and carefully chosen. After nine years of teaching and creating a range of language games, including interactive online resources, to “trial-and-error” how they can be used to support students’ learning outcomes, it is evident that games can only be effective in language acquisition if the following factors are met:

• Meeting language outcomes: STAR – Skill, Time, Assessable and Realistic
• Motivating: fun and challenging
• Meaningful: apply learnt/previous knowledge
• Manageable: cost (sustainable) and time effective

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will gain deeper knowledge of how students learn, how to differentiate and engage students through a range of resources and improve their teaching practices, which in turn will improve students’ learning outcomes.

1.5.2 Develop teaching activities that incorporate differentiated strategies to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.

3.4.2 Select and/or create and use a range of resources, including ICT, to engage students in their learning.

6.3.2 Contribute to collegial discussions and apply constructive feedback from colleagues to improve professional knowledge and practice.

Dr Nadia Selim, University of South Australia

The need to understand language learners’ motivation has inspired six decades of research into L2 motivation (Al-Hoorie & Macintyre, 2019). However, the literature suggests that the field can still benefit from qualitative research that examines secondary school students’ motivation to learn languages other than English (Boo et al., 2015; Dörnyei & Al-Hoorie, 2017; Ushioda, 1994, 2016). Moreover, it has been suggested that research that solicits learners’ voices constitutes a “promising line of inquiry” (Ushioda, 2008:29).

This presentation will shed light on some findings of doctoral research that explored the motivation and language learning experiences of adolescent non-Arab Muslims learning Arabic at Australian Islamic Schools. This exploratory research utilised a basic interpretive qualitative approach, and data were collected using semi-structured interviews as well as classroom observations. Data analysis utilised a thematic analytical approach.

The presentation will focus on three points. Firstly, the learners’ motivational orientations (or interests in learning Arabic). Secondly, the prevalence of disengagement and the emergence of resistance among learners. Thirdly, the possible explanations that emerged for these two phenomena. In keeping with the importance placed on learners’ voices, the research and the data presented here emphasise the students’ own words and perspectives.

These findings are not only relevant to the broader field of L2 motivation but also extend our insight into the motivation to learn Arabic in English-dominant contexts for the following reasons. Firstly, by introducing qualitative data to a field that has predominantly utilised survey designs. Secondly, by focusing on adolescent non-Arab Muslim learners of Arabic whose interests, experiences and perspectives are not well-understood. Finally, by introducing findings from the Australian context to the findings from the North American context.

Reference List:

Al-Hoorie, A. H., & Macintyre, P. (2019). Contemporary language motivation theory: 60 years since Gardner and Lambert (1959) (First ed.). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788925211

Boo, Z., Dörnyei, Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). L2 motivation research 2005-2014: Understanding a publication surge and a changing landscape. System, 55, 145-157. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.006

Dörnyei, Z., & Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2017). The motivational foundation of learning languages other than global English: Theoretical issues and research directions. The Modern Language Journal, 101(3), 455-468. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12408

Ushioda, E. (1994). L2 motivation as a qualitative construct. TEANGA, 14, 76-84. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED379949

Ushioda, E. (2008). Motivation and good language learners. In C. Griffiths (Ed.), Lessons from good language learners (pp. 19-34). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497667.004

Ushioda, E. (2016). Language learning motivation through a small lens: A research agenda. Language Teaching, 49(4), 564-577. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444816000173