19 November 2009

A well attended and highly productive roundtable on languages and cultural studies took place as part of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences' HASS on the Hill program on 28 October 2009. Researchers and politicians/policy makers engaged in a lively and mutually beneficial debate on English language policy and support for Indigenous students and for child and adult immigrants.

There was a particular focus on recently arrived and very disadvantaged adolescent refugees; on the teaching and learning of languages other than English in schools and universities; and on the role of the Australian national curriculum on language and cultural studies in general. The researchers called for current policy to be based more strongly on evidence from research about the value of bilingualism to English literacy.

Since the roundtable there have been two follow up discussions about refugee and immigrant education and the Hon. Laurie Ferguson, MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services has requested additional input to inform policy development processes from researchers in the learning of English as a second language. A teleconference has also been arranged for officers of the Department of Immigration with participating researchers to more closely link projects of research in the adult immigration area to policy and to build a new system of research for the adult immigrant English field.

Background and aims of the roundtable

The roundtable was held against the background of the formation of new networks and policies on languages, including the first year of the National Tertiary Languages Network and the implementation of the Government's National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP).

Language and literacy education are continually debated in the Australian media, in parent teacher meetings, in academic research projects and among activists. There is continual lobbying on a wide range of language issues.

During 2009 four issues have dominated language discussions as reported in the national print media: (i) English learning and literacy and its relationship to first language maintenance among Indigenous children (many of the issues and research evidence cited are also applicable to the situation of immigrant children); (ii) the ongoing crisis of language teaching in mainstream schools and universities (persistently low retention rates and serious attrition of numbers at year 10 with the lowest year 12 enrolments since 1968, compounded by a decline in the number of languages taught at University); (iii) the critical importance of English proficiency in migrant entrance determination and for the integration of international students into Australian education institutions and; (iv) ongoing disputes about the right balance of aims in language education between Australia's external trade, security and regional engagement needs and broader remits encompassing cultural, humanistic and intellectual enrichment.

A recent review of the state of languages education across Australia by Professor Joe Lo Bianco, Second Languages and Australian Schooling (Australian Education Review No 54, Camberwell, VIC: Australian Council of Educational Research, 2009), draws attention to the interrelated nature of these language problems and how action is needed to tackle each of them.

The aim of the roundtable was for humanities and social science academics and researchers to explore with political representatives solutions to such problems and to exchange views on how as a nation we can coordinate action to respond to these challenges.

The roundtable explored the following issues:

1. Practically all Australian Indigenous languages are threatened with extinction. What are the needed policy measures to strengthen Australia's unique Indigenous languages and secure them for future generations?
2. What does research tell us about how to improve English language and literacy attainments among young Indigenous Australians? What are the policy measures we need to ensure that Indigenous children's educational achievements are improved?
3. In the context of moves for a national curriculum for Australia what is the best way to secure a permanent place for the key languages of Asia and Europe at school and university level across the country?
4. How can the evidence from research about children's learning be linked more closely with teaching and learning?
5. How can we ensure that immigrant and refugee children and adults are supported to attain the highest levels of English literacy and language as they continue to develop and retain their original languages?
6. How can we use the moves to a national curriculum to ensure a universal world studies perspective for all learners that deals seriously with the societies and cultures of Asia and the formative cultures of Europe that have shaped Australian institutions?
7. What ongoing mechanisms for interaction can be establish to keep active the debate between educators, researchers and policy makers?

These issues raise complex questions of identity, rights, educational performance, delivery of programs, curriculum planning, research, funding and priority setting. What are the most productive ways to ensure that Australia responds to such language challenges and needs? How can we meet the language needs arising from the deep economic and geo-political shifts underway in today's world while still responding to the essential human rights involved in language maintenance and to overcoming serious educational disadvantages among minority groups? Even as we respond to urgent needs and challenges we should explore ways to strengthen and support the efforts of the 350 language groups which comprise the Australian population to retain their distinctive language and cultural heritage. Their success represents a vast 'donation' of language skills and cultural knowledge by Indigenous and immigrant groups for the benefit of the whole society, a cause for celebration of the unique diversity of Australia's contemporary population.

A Humanistic Education and Language Rights

The Australian Academy of the Humanities has for two decades been at the forefront of action to redress the continual pattern of neglect of languages in education and public policy. In the last four years alone the Academy has undertaken two major studies on the role of ab initio courses in universities and on the retention of enrolled students across various year levels. In November 2006 the Academy devoted its annual meeting to languages, in a Symposium entitled Gift of the Gab. On 7 June 2007, jointly with the Group of Eight universities, it organised a National Summit on Languages at the National Press Club called Languages in Crisis. In February 2009 the Academy organised a highly successful National Colloquium on languages in higher education entitled: Beyond the Crisis: Revitalising Languages in Australian Universities. The reason for devoting so much attention to languages is summed up in the words of Academy President, Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson "&hellp; languages are indispensible to a humanistic education".

The final communique´ issued by the National Press Club summit expresses the issues related to language education as follows: "The Summit holds that it is time to get serious about Australia's language capability. It is time to significantly increase our commitment to expanding the language skills of our citizens. It is time to rebuild our national language-teaching capacity so that a long-term improvement in our language-speaking capability will be sustained."

This call to action is in response to the genuinely disturbing pattern of erosion of languages in Australian universities in which institutions teach fewer languages, in less secure ways, for less time per week, for shorter periods, by an increasingly casually employed staff, in underfunded and insecure programs. This precarious state of university language education is matched at senior secondary schooling where fewer students take languages than at any time since 1968. However, the situation related to Indigenous languages is more serious and extreme. Australian languages are spoken in no other part of the world and represent an irreplaceable repository of the unique communication systems of the world's oldest cultures. If Indigenous Australian children cease to speak these languages the languages themselves cease to exist.

The educational achievements and life chances of minority students of all backgrounds, including immigrant and refugee children, are connected to having a more systematic and supportive process of English as a second language teaching as well as first language support. Since the late 1990s while there has been ongoing attention to the literacy standards of Australian students far too little attention has been placed on the English language needs of newly arrived children.

All of these issues and problems are dimensions of a single underlying problem: the absence of a comprehensive approach to language planning for Australia's overall communication needs. Such an approach would address languages rights, English and English literacy teaching and second language education, all critical elements in a comprehensive language education policy.

Discussion participants

• Chair: Professor Joseph Lo Bianco FAHA, Chair Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne, Convenor, Language Studies Committee, Academy of the Humanities
• The Hon Laurie Ferguson MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services
• Mr Mark Dreyfus QC MP
• Professor Kent Anderson FAHA, Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University
• Professor Richard Fotheringham FAHA, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland
• Associate Professor Helen Moore, School of Education, The University of New South Wales
• Adriano Truscott, Deptartment of Education and Training, Western Australia
• Ms Misty Adoniou, Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra
• Mr Matthew Absalom, Lecturer - Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne and Representative of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association
• Kathe Kirby, Executive Director, Asialink, University of Melbourne
• HASS on the Hill delegates also witnessed the roundtable and contributed to the discussion.

Heidi Hutchison
Policy and Research Officer
Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Heidi Hutchison
16 November 2009

 

 

For more information, please contact:

Executive Director

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

Phone: +61 2 6201 2740

director@chass.org.au