Languages in the Australian curriculum:Languages in the Australian curriculum:more of the same or different?more of the same or different?

Association of French Teachers of VictoriaMelbourne, 22 July 2011

Angela ScarinoResearch Centre for Languages and CulturesUniversity of South AustraliaEmail: angela.scarino@unisa.edu.au

Outline

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An opening question

Context and process of development

Making the curriculum

The changes

An example

A return to the opening question and implications

An opening question

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Is the shape of Languages in the Australian curriculum

more of the same…. or different?

Context and process of developmentContext and process of development

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The Melbourne Declaration• languages included: “especially Asian languages”• a national curriculum is signalled

Consultation on the draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages

• national forum (October 2010)

• widespread consultation (January-April 2011)

• revision process (April-July 2011) Curriculum development

• procedures and guidelines ( August 2011)• commencement of writing: broad outline, then detail (

September onwards)• national consultation and trialling• next phase of writing, consultation, trialling, re-writing

5The Australian, March 2, 2011

Making the curriculum

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The Age June 29, 2011

Making the curriculum

Making the curriculum

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The Australian, March 2, 2011

Making the curriculum - consultation feedback - 1

Key strengths:

•The strong positioning of languages within school education.•The development of language-specific curricula.•The strong positioning of Australian Languages.•Recognition of the diversity of language learners and pathways.•The rationale for learning languages.•Key concepts and understandings in learning languages.•The aims of learning a language.•The nature of knowledge, skills and understanding in learning a language.•The discussion of general capabilities.

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Key issues:

•Indicative hours.•Selection of languages and pathways for development.

•The staging of language-specific curriculum development.

•‘Home user’ learner category.

•‘Reciprocating’ .

•Expectations of the shape paper.

•Implementation and policy issues e.g. national languages policy, teacher supply and professional development, eligibility.

Making the curriculum - consultation feedback - 2

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Making the curriculum - consultation feedback - 3

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Making the curriculum - consultation feedback - 4

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• 69 responses [total 2150]

• Mainly from Victoria; mainly individuals; some

associations (including AFTV)

• 57% (independent school); 19% (catholic school); 6%

(government school)

• Approximately 60% agreement

Responses for French

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• A great basis for language rationale and policies into the future.

• The paper gives excellent reasons for learning languages.

• “the emphasis on Australian languages as well as Asian languages is welcome but could be interpreted as an over-emphasis on these at the expense of other languages”.

• “I really like the term ‘reciprocating’”.

Responses for French: key strengthsResponses for French: key strengths

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• Indicative hours

• Need for compulsory languages till Year 9/10

• “the use of the term ‘second language learners’… assumes a monolingual baseline”

• “in its current form (the paper) does nothing to encourage students to continue” learning languages

• “the paper outlines the challenges of promoting languages in order to increase student participation but it does little to provide incentives for this to happen”

• “students should be better defined from the beginning”

• “Australian languages should be considered in a different paper”

• “too broad and too demanding for the classroom”

• “these three strands should not be seen as discrete” – why not?”

• “will funding be guided by this?”

Responses for French: key issues

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• “we should consider adopting the Common European Framework”

• “…assessment: is it to be done in the L1?”

• “the paper is lacking in solid reference to future skills needed by students”

• “the AFTV suggests … a larger number of (student) groupings”

• “More clarification of reciprocating required”

• “…providing a ‘framework’ often seems to me to be a way of not saying what you’re really going to do”

• “the content appears to be over-ambitious”

Responses for French: key issues (cont.)

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Structuring the curriculum• learner background• time-on-task (intensity, continuity)• program-types

 The substance of the curriculum•organisation of teaching and learning•language•language AND culture, learning, literacy, content/knowledge, identity within and across languages and cultures

 A monolingual or a plurilingual curriculum?

Policy Policy curriculum policy curriculum policy curriculum curriculum

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• explicit statement that all languages are important

• language-specific curricula

• different pathways for learning and differentiation of learner groups

• recognition of various entry points

• the allocation of indicative hours in the context of extreme variability in languages provision

• avoids a narrowly-focussed instrumental view of languages

• an expanded view of language

• achievement standards as more appropriate in curriculum design than proficiency standards

The changes

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• Difficult to define what it means to learn to know another language (Larsen-Freeman and Freeman 2008)

• Communicative language teaching: a theoretical construct, a goal, an approach to pedagogy as interactive, transactional ‘communication’ in the target

language (isolated from social, historical, cultural contexts) absence of cultural content(?) differing positions: questioning the appropriateness of the

construct itself questioning the restrictive ways in which we have understood it

K-12 frameworks: interface with constructs of ‘proficiency’ and standards (Byrnes 2006, Kramsch 2006)

need to re/frame and expand the construct

Re-framing the languages curriculum: Re-framing the languages curriculum: beyond CLTbeyond CLT

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• An expanding view of language; language as personal, expressive – how we want to be in a language (Shohamy)

• Learning a language is not a monolingual activity as there are always at least two languages at play (Kramsch)

• Language mediates learning – learning to mean (Halliday)

• Language is not only something that we use; we are “at home” in language; to learn a language is to learn an inheritance (Gadamer)

Expanding the construct - 1Expanding the construct - 1

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Expanding the construct - 2Expanding the construct - 2

View of languageLanguage as word; language as social elaborate, social practice to highlightstructural, grammatical practice not just the act or the practice itself,system; code but people and their interpretation and

meaning making

participants in a reciprocal process of interpretation practice of the language and the person

View of cultureculture as facts; culture as social elaborate to highlight not just diverseartefacts; practices; ways of practices; but culture as the lens information doing things through which people mutually interpret

in diverse cultures and communicate meaning

View of learningacquisition of new participation in use elaborate to highlight how learning,knowledge of knowledge as making sense or coming to

understand involves becomingaware of how learners themselves

interpret knowledge through their language and culture

* Reciprocal exchange of meanings across languages and cultures in communicating and learning to communicate, better and better; return to self as language user and language learner.

ReciprocatingReciprocating

• As an overall theoretical orientation to communication, learning, education.

• As a goal of communication and learning – mutual interpretation and exchange of meaning mutual understanding of self and other.

• As a driving force in communicating and learning – an integral characteristic of the act of communication and of learning as experience and reflection on that experience; talk and talk about talk; language use and exploration/analyses/reflection on use.

• As a meta-process: knowing why.

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Multicultural unit (Year 10/11 French)

•Joe Van Dalen, 2008

•The students

•Interactions

•Texts/data as ‘inputs’ for exploration

•Issues: explosion des banlieues

le port du foulard

•The journal reflection

(See Handout)

Expanding language learning

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An exampleAn example

- more of the same or different?

A return to the opening questionA return to the opening question

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• for programs

• for students

• for teachers

• for the AFTV and similar organisations

Implications

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Understanding, like action, always remains a risk and never leaves the room for the simple application of a general knowledge of rules to the statements or texts to be understood. Furthermore, where it is successful, understanding means a growth in inner awareness, which as a new experience enters into the texture of our own mental experience. Understanding is an adventure and, like any other adventure is dangerous… But … it is capable of contributing in a special way to theU, for everything understanding mediates is mediated along with ourselves (Gadamer, 1981, pp.109-110)

Action and interpretive understanding across languages and cultures

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Byrnes, H. (2006). Perspectives: Interrogating communicative competence as a framework for collegiate foreign language study. Modern Language Journal, 90, 244-246.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1981). Reason in the Age of Science (F. G. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gadamer, H-G. (1976). Philosophical Hermeneutics. D.E. Linge (editor and translator). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gallagher, S. (1992) Hermeneutics and education. Albany, N.Y., SUNY Press.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education. 4, 93-116.

Kramsch, C. (2003). Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives. New York. Continuum.

Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence. Modern Language Journal. 90, 249-252.

Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Kramsch, C. (2010). The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural. Language Teaching. pp.1-14.

References

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Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. London. Hodder Education.

Shohamy, E. (1996). Language testing. Matching assessment procedures with language knowledge. In Birenbaum, M. and Dochy, F. (Eds). Alternatives in assessment of achievements, learning processes and prior knowledge. Boston, MA. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp.143-159.

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