CHASS

Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

2009 HASS on the Hill

Day 2: Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Languages and cultural awareness: The challenge of multilingualism and cultural diversity in a global world

Roundtable meeting
10:45 - 12:30
Committee Room 1S4 at Parliament House

From the : 2009 HASS on the Hill program

The roundtable will focus on the teaching of foreign/community languages other than English in schools and universities, issues surrounding Indigenous languages in bilingual education, and the critical need for an improved effort for English as a Second Language (ESL) provision in schooling. The aim is to interact with policy makers linking research to practical problems. This session will bring together academic and practitioner leaders in fields being debated in the media or of public interest with the aim of making research and knowledge accessible to them.

Discussion paper
Background and aims

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:

  1. 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);
  2. 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);
  3. The critical importance of English proficiency in migrant entrance determination and for the integration of international students into Australian education institutions, and;
  4. 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 (Lo Bianco, 2009) draws attention to the interrelated nature of these language problems and how action is needed to tackle each of them.

The aim of this session is 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. 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 "… 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 questions

In light of these issues the following questions can serve as discussion starters to assist us to explore the practical solutions to Australia's many language challenges and needs.

  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?
Reference

Lo Bianco, J. (2009), Second Languages and Australian Schooling. Australian Education Review No 54, Camberwell, VIC: Australian Council of Educational Research http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/AER_54-SecondLanguagesAndAustralianSchooling.pdf

Download the roundtable briefing paper PDF   [PDF file size: 102kB]

 
Roundtable participants

The following people are participating in the Languages and cultural awareness roundtable.

• Chair: Professor Joseph Lo Bianco FAHA
Chair Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne
• Professor Kent Anderson
Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University
• Ms Misty Adoniou
Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra
• Professor Richard Fotheringham
Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland
• Ms Kathe Kirby
Executive Director, Asialink, University of Melbourne
• Associate Professor Helen Moore
School of Education, The University of New South Wales
• Mr Adriano Truscott
Deptartment of Education and Training, Western Australia
• Mr Matthew Absalom
Lecturer - Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne and Representative of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association
Chair: Professor Joseph Lo Bianco FAHA

Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne and an international language planning adviser. At present he is a consultant to the Royal Thai Institute on a national language policy for Thailand. He has worked in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, the United States, China, Italy and the UK on language policy. Professor Lo Bianco's latest report, Second Languages and Australian Schooling, traces the history of language learning in Australia, outlines the findings of research from Australia and overseas and proposes a new rationale for language learning policy.

Second Languages and Australian Schooling
Australian Education Review No 54. Melbourne: ACER.
It is written with Yvette Slaughter and includes a Foreword by Professor Richard Johnstone, OBE, Emeritus Professor, University of Stirling and Director of SCOTLANG.

 
Professor Kent Anderson

Professor Kent Anderson is a comparative lawyer specialising in Japan. He is Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, where more languages are taught than anywhere else in Australia, including critical languages such as Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, and Indonesian. He also holds a joint appointment with the ANU College of Law. Kent is currently President of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia, the association for Japanese language and Japanese studies in Australia.

Kent comes come from a multi-disciplinary background (Business, Law, History) with engagement throughout the Asia-Pacific region (Japan, China, Thailand, Pacific, and Korea). He has an eclectic background doing his tertiary studies in Japan, US, and UK, and working first as a marketing manager with a US regional airline in Alaska, then as a practicing commercial lawyer in Hawaii, and, before joining ANU, as associate professor at Hokkaido University School of Law.

In addition to private international law and insolvency, he teaches a variety of Japanese law courses including a cross-listed introductory course, an advanced seminar, a language course on reading Japanese legal materials, a moot arbitration and negotiation in Japan course, and an intensive graduate course in Kyoto. Kent's research currently focuses on insolvency, private international law, and recently the introduction of Japan's new quasi-jury system (saiban-in seido).

Outside of work, Kent enjoys brewing Ales, listening to the Blues, and playing with his Child - the ABCs of life.

 
Ms Misty Adoniou

Misty Adoniou lectures in Literacy and Teaching English as Second Language at the University of Canberra. Currently she is the Chair-elect of the International Affiliate Leadership Council of TESOL, the international association for teachers of English. She is the immediate past President of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, and, in this role, has recently been involved in submissions to government on the Citizenship Test, the National Curriculum, the national assessment program NAPLAN, and the National Partnership funding for low SES schools, literacy and numeracy and quality teaching. She is an advisor to the National Curriculum writers on issues of equity and diversity. She is also a past Chairperson of TESOL Greece and regularly presents to English language teachers around the globe. A winner this year of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council award for outstanding teaching, she has a particular passion for ensuring that theory is translated into effective practice, both in the schools and in teacher education.

 
Professor Richard Fotheringham

Professor Richard Fotheringham, BA (Hons), MA, PhD (UQ), FAHA, was appointed Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The University of Queensland in 2004. He was formerly Head of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History and has worked at UQ since 1979. He was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2004.

He has managerial responsibility for four schools and two faculty research centres including UQ's School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies which teaches eight languages: French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish, as well as linguistics, applied linguistics and comparative cultural and literary studies.

Professor Fotheringham was a committee member of the federally-funded national investigation 2004-2008 into the Study of languages other than English (LOTE) in Australian universities, and initiated and is chief manager for the Brisbane Universities Language Alliance (2009-2011), through which UQ has taken the leading role in offering nine languages to students at the three major universities in the greater Brisbane region: UQ, the Queensland University of Technology, and Griffith University.

He has had a long and distinguished career as an academic administrator and leader, including as Chair of the 2007 Review of the Queensland Senior English Syllabus, as Chair of the Queensland Board of Senior Secondary School Studies 2000-2002, and as a member of many other professional, state and national organisations in Education and the Arts.

Professor Fotheringham's own research is in theatre history, Australian Literature, and Shakespeare studies. He was the convenor of the World Shakespeare Congress held in Brisbane in July 2006, and was chief editor of the selected conference proceedings Shakespeare's World/World Shakespeares which included chapters on Shakespearean study and performances in Germany, Holland, Egypt, South Africa, Sudan, Japan, India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea.

 
Ms Kathe Kirby

Kathe Kirby has been with the Asia Education Foundation (AEF) since 1993. She currently holds the positions of Executive Director of the AEF and of the Asialink Centre of The University of Melbourne. Asialink is Australia's largest Asia-Australia institute with a mission to foster knowledge and networks between Australia and Asia. The AEF was established by the Keating Government to lead, promote and support the studies of Asia in Australian schools as part of developing a curriculum relevant to Australians - and Australia - in the twenty-first century. Through the AEF Kathe has worked in and with China, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, India and the USA and New Zealand. Kathe has a long background in school education having worked as a secondary school teacher, a university lecturer in education and as a senior policy officer in the Department of Education, Victoria, prior to joining the AEF. After five years teaching, Kathe spent three years in private industry. In 2001 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate studies of Asia in the USA, UK, Japan and Korea and in 2007 was nominated by The Bulletin magazine as one of Australia's 'Top 100 smartest people'. She is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a Board member of the Foundation for Young Australians and the Australian Government's Australia Malaysia Institute.

 
Associate Professor Helen Moore

Helen Moore is conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Education, University of New South Wales, and Vice President of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA).

Helen has taught in schools and universities in Papua-New Guinea, Holland, England, China, Canada and Australia. In the late 1970s at La Trobe University, Melbourne, she instituted one of the first full TESOL awards in Australia, which grew during the 1980s into a TESOL teacher education program from pre-service to doctoral levels. She was also responsible for a bridging program for graduates from non-English speaking countries seeking teacher registration, and assisted in setting up bilingual Chinese-English programs in three Melbourne schools. From 1992-93, when the crucial shift to competitive contracting for the AMEP was initiated, she was Acting Director of the Language Centre at La Trobe University, which held an AMEP contract.

Throughout her career, Helen has been active in advocacy and policy research in language education. With Howard Nicholas, Michael Clyne & Anne Pauwels, she researched and wrote Languages at the Crossroads, Report of the National Enquiry into the Employment & Supply of Teachers of Languages other than English, (Language Australia, 1993). Her doctorate from the Ontario Institute in Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (2005) was an historical analysis of politics and policies in identifying students for ESL provision in schools (1947-1996). She was principal author of Opening the Doors: Provision for Refugee Youth with Minimal/No Previous Schooling in the Adult Migrant English Program (with Howard Nicholas & Julie Deblaquiere; AMEP Research Centre, 2008). For the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA), she has just completed researching and writing a Discussion Paper entitled Towards a National Policy Framework for Learners of English as an Additional Language or Dialect in Australian Schools, and, for the Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages in the ACT (ATESOL ACT), a submission to the ACT Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs Inquiry into the Educational Achievement Gap in the ACT, before whom she appears (with Misty Adoniou) on 27 October.

 
Mr Adriano Truscott

Adriano Truscott is an ESL teacher/linguist with the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning program, Department of Education and Training, Western Australia, researching cultural cognitive linguistics of Aboriginal English with Monash University. As project officer, he also develops Aboriginal ESL/ESD learning and teaching resources, informs policy and curriculum development, and delivers professional learning to educators, including teachers and Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers as well as staff from health and legal sectors.

He has worked extensively on community and regional Aboriginal language teaching, revival and development projects in the Mid West of Western Australia. With community members, this work has included publishing books in Aboriginal languages, involvement with the development of an accredited Aboriginal language course, two-way classroom language teaching, provision of training for teachers on linguistics and language teaching. In 2007, after state-wide consultation with Aboriginal communities and language centres, he developed and submitted a report to the WA Human Rights Act consultation committee to include detailed provisions on language rights. This report represented over 6000 community members. Following the National Indigenous Languages Conference 2008, Adriano coordinated a nation-wide consultation on the conference recommendations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, language centres and Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics. A version of the document was presented to the Expert Group meeting on Endangered Languages at the United Nations in 2008 and later informed the FATSIL 2009 Indigenous languages petition. For the 2008 International Year of Languages, with the help and support of several communities in the Mid West, he produced one of, if not the first multi-media campaign in Aboriginal languages that ran throughout Western Australia.

He has taught English as a second language in the UK, Japan, China and Australia in a range of contexts. He is currently the WA councillor for the Australian Council of TESOL Associations.

 
Mr Matthew Absalom

Matthew Absalom is a university teacher and researcher, professional linguist, translator and published author. He is currently a lecturer in Italian Studies at The University of Melbourne. He holds qualifications in music, education, languages and linguistics, and his research interests cover Italian linguistics, computer assisted language learning and languages education. A regular visitor to Italy over the last 20 years, he has carried out research, led study tours including the ELTF Italy, and negotiated in-country study opportunities for his students. His university career in Australia spans 3 universities the Australian National University, University of South Australia and the University of Melbourne. Matthew is a passionate advocate for languages and has published opinions in the national media. He is the current editor of Babel, the journal of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Associations.