Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Research Publications
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ItemLanguage teaching and learning: choice, pedagogy, rationale and goals.(AFMLTA, 2009)In his examination of successful innovation and change in education in many settings, Fullan (2001) identifies the three broad options for effecting change that public authorities have at their disposal. They can seek to bring about change through imposing accountability (system-wide or targeted), or through providing incentives (either "negatively" as pressure or "positively" as support), or they can direct their attention towards "capacity-building" for key agents in the field being addressed, such as teachers, schools or universities. The review of Australian language policy shows that rarely has there been a consistent process of building on previous innovation and rarely are these three meta-strategies of accountability, incentives and capacity-building used in the judicious combination which is most likely to succeed. A central feature of education policy making is the critical, professional role of teachers and it would be to this that a capacity-building approach would be directed. This article discusses choice, pedagogy, rationale and goals in language teaching and learning. Key values and aspirations for proficiency in languages other than English relevant to the Australian context are also explored.
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ItemLanguage teaching and learning: Some hard decisions.(AFMLTA, 2009)In his examination of successful innovation and change in education in many settings, Fullan (2001) identifies the three broad options for effecting change that public authorities have at their disposal. They can seek to bring about change through imposing accountability (system-wide or targeted), or through providing incentives (either ‘negatively’as pressure or ‘positively’as support), or they can direct their attention towards ‘capacity-building’for key agents in the field being addressed, such as teachers, schools or universities. It is exceedingly difficult to combine accountability, incentives, and capacity-building, as evidenced by the fact that no government has ever done it effectively. It is complex and there are in-built tensions. It is easy to err in providing too much or too little control.
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ItemBilingual Education in Australia(Springer International Publishing, 2017)The Australian experience of bilingual education is composed of three separate audiences: Indigenous groups and their languages, immigrant groups and their languages (both of these groups seeking language maintenance and intergenerational vitality), and mainstream English speakers seeking additive language study. All these interests share a common aim of lobbying for more serious and substantial language education programs, but differ significantly in the purposes and context of their promotion of bilingual education. This chapter provides an overview of historical, political, and educational influences on forms of bilingual education that have emerged, in the context of state and national language policy and practices, to meet the needs of Indigenous Australians, migrant communities, and Anglophones.
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ItemRecognizing Diversity: The Incipient Role of Intercultural Education in Thailand(SPRINGER, 2016-01-01)Thailand has a long and consistent policy of denying concessions to a pluralist vision of its identity which would arise from formal recognition of differences, and has never embraced, at the official level, any discourse approximating multiculturalism. Instead, it has stressed the importance of minority assimilation to established and privileged norms, and succeeded in propagating a general perception of itself, both domestically and internationally, as ethnically homogenous. Despite this attempt to create an image of cultural homogeneity, as the first section of this chapter demonstrates, Thailand has a long history of diversity, from the polyethnic foundations of the Kingdom of Siam to the geophysical demarcation of its territory. Suppression of diversity in Thailand has resulted in ethnic stratification, the consequences of which reverberate throughout modern society. The second component of the chapter focuses on an education commission undertaken through the UNICEF Language, Education and Social Cohesion (LESC) Initiative, a component of the UNICEF Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy (PBEA) Programme. Activities undertaken through the LESC Initiative, and through this particular mapping exercise, represent important groundwork in creating a dialogue around difference and how it is represented and engaged with in the Thai education system. In the context of the exercise in curriculum mapping, some reflections on the relevance of the notions of multicultural education for the specific setting and historical circumstances of Thailand are elaborated.
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ItemUNICEF EAPRO – Suggestions for UNICEF EAPRO Strategy (2016-2020) on Multilingual Education and Social Cohesion(Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, 2016)
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ItemLanguage policy and education in Australia(Springer International Publishing, 2017)Australia’s language policy history reflects the country’s complex linguistic demography and multiple policy needs and interests. Languages and language policy have played an important and evolving role in the formation of Australia as a postcolonial, immigrant, and trading nation, moving from the suppression of Indigenous languages and a preference for British English norms through colonization, to greater assertion of language rights for Indigenous and immigrant languages, and onto economically motivated language planning. The policy landscape has been intermittently shaped by decisive policies for language policy and language education policy, as well as educational interventions such as the prioritization of English literacy. This chapter provides an overview of the historical, political, and educational influences on the language policy landscape in Australia, including achievements in addressing Indigenous and community language needs, along with supporting second language acquisition more broadly in the education system. However, the absence of a national language policy contributes to a weak language policy environment, where language rights are highly politicized and the loss of collaborative language policy processes has led to fragmented and fragile language program provision.
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ItemLanguage programming in rural and regional Victoria: Making space for local viewpoints in policy development(John Benjamins Publishing, 2019-12-10)Despite decades of often ambitious policies in Australia, languages education is still characterized by intermittent commitment to the teaching of languages, with inequitable access particularly entrenched in rural and regional contexts. While research has focused on the practical and material constraints impacting on policy implementation, little research has investigated the role of the discursive terrain in shaping expectations and limitations around what seems achievable in schools, particularly, from the school principal perspective. Beginning with an overview of policy interventions and an analysis of contemporary challenges, we use Q methodology to identify and analyze viewpoints at work in similarly-positioned rural and regional schools. In doing so, we seek to determine what seems possible or impossible across settings; the role of principals in enabling and constraining pathways for the provision of school language programs, and the need for macro-level language policy to be informed by constraints specific to rural and regional contexts.
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ItemResolving ethnolinguistic conflict in multi-ethnic societies(Springer Nature, 2017-04-28)Language is a common underlying cause of conflict in multi-ethnic societies. Facilitated dialogue — a method of conflict mediation — is being used in countries such as Myanmar to mitigate language-based conflict, acknowledge language rights, and encourage societies to adopt a culture of dialogue.
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ItemForeword [to Cultures of schooling : pedagogies for cultural difference and social access](The Falmer Press, 1990)
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ItemEthical Dilemmas and Language Policy (LP) Advising(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2016)This chapter discusses ethical dilemmas in Language Policy (LP) in high-stakes settings where an external advisor facilitates writing of language policies. Such dilemmas of outside indeed any expertise interacting with officials and communities pose significant ethical challenges. It describes the general nature of LP, since its focus is professional advising and policy drafting, rather than research directed at new theory, program evaluation, or general analysis of language policies. While ethical quandaries and challenges occur in most applied linguistics activities, LP is particularly prone to ethical concerns because it deals with professional decisions about the prestige, standing, and corpus of other people's forms of communication. While rules and guidelines drawn from university ethics regulation and the legal obligations enforced in contracts provide much of the ethical framework for work described here, the modern horkos, minus its ancient curse, but with the addition of local debate and collegial discussion, remains useful as an internal, personal inspiration.