The increasing influence of sociocultural theories of learning on assessment practices in second language education necessitates an expansion of the knowledge base that teacher-assessors need to ...develop (what teachers need to know) and related changes in the processes of language teacher education (how they learn and develop it). Teacher assessors need to acquire concepts from diverse assessment paradigms; they need to learn to use these concepts in developing, using and analysing assessment procedures and results; they need to exercise critical perspectives on their own assessment practices for particular purposes in diverse contexts, especially in seeking to do justice to all in education. This paper argues that, to develop language assessment literacy with the dual goals of transforming teacher assessment practices and developing teacher understanding of the phenomenon of assessment itself and themselves as assessors, it is necessary to reconsider both the knowledge base and the complex processes of language teacher education. It draws on projects the author has conducted on developing and investigating teacher understanding and practices in second language assessment, to discuss the need to work with the often tacit preconceptions, beliefs, understandings and world-views about assessment that teacher-assessors bring to teacher professional learning programs and that inform their conceptualisations, interpretations, judgments and decisions in assessment. It discusses the need in developing language assessment literacy for processes that develop teacher-assessors' capability to explore and evaluate their own preconceptions so as to become aware of how they interpret their own assessment practices and their students' second language learning. Through these processes they develop a deeper understanding of the interpretive nature of assessment and their own self-awareness as assessors. Author abstract, ed
This wide-ranging survey of issues in intercultural language teaching and learning covers everything from core concepts to program evaluation, and advocates a fluid, responsive approach to teaching ...language that reflects its central role in fostering intercultural understanding.Includes coverage of theoretical issues defining language, culture, and communication, as well as practice-driven issues such as classroom interactions, technologies, programs, and language assessmentExamines systematically the components of language teaching: language itself, meaning, culture, learning, communicating, and assessments, and puts them in social and cultural contextFeatures numerous examples throughout, drawn from various languages,international contexts, and frameworksIncorporates a decade of in-depth research and detailed documentation from the authors’ collaborative work with practicing teachersProvides a much-needed addition to the sparse literature on intercultural aspects of language education
In situating the challenges in languages education policy in Australia in current times, I give an account of policy and curriculum development for the learning of languages in school education. In ...so doing, I highlight (1) the integral relationship between languages education, literacy and multiculturalism policies; (2) the meaning and consequences of the absence of a national policy on languages; and (3) the fundamental challenge of addressing the pervasive 'monolingual mindset', particularly in school education, as a major site for the formation of knowledge, understanding and values. I then draw on my recent experience of working on the framing of Languages as a learning area in the national curriculum, which is currently being developed in Australia, to illustrate the complexity of doing languages policy and curriculum policy work and the efforts to resist the forces towards simplification. I conclude with a discussion of the challenge of 'unlearning' monolingualism, both for those involved in the field of languages education and for those involved in education in general.
Scarino explains why teaching of culture has always played an important role in the teaching of languages. Traditionally, it has been presented as the "cultural component," which was generally ...separate front and subordinate to the teaching of the language itself. This cultural component frequently comprised a generalized body of knowledge about the target country and its people, ranging from literature and the arts to aspects of everyday life. Although this body of knowledge was intended to enrich students' understanding of the target language, it remained external to and separate from the students' own first language and culture. It was not intended that students would engage with this cultural knowledge in such a way that their own identities, values, and life-worlds would be challenged and transformed.
Since the 1970s translation has been discredited in languages teaching and learning. Nevertheless, it can be seen as a natural phenomenon in many domains of contemporary, globalised life. ...Furthermore, learners themselves have not ceased to use translation as a strategy in the process of language learning. They necessarily use their primary language as the basis for understanding and using an additional language or to use and understand their primary language in contexts in which it is a minority language. This process can be likened to the task of translators as they seek to establish a relationship with another language and culture. In this paper I discuss translation as an act of intercultural mediation. Translation in language learning is presented in two senses: as a valuable intercultural activity in itself, and as fundamental to the act of language learning. I then discuss the way in which translation has been included in the development of the new (national) Australian curriculum for languages and the contestation that has emerged in relation to its inclusion. I argue that it is a reconceptualisation of translation as intercultural mediation that permits its value in language learning to be fully realised.
The increasing diversity of learners and teachers of languages (of both English as an Additional Language or Dialect EAL/D and Languages) coincides with major efforts to reconceptualise the nature of ...additional language learning towards multilingual and intercultural orientations. In this paper I first describe the policy context of EAL/D in Australia, which shapes the reality of EAL/D provision and practices. I then discuss some expansions of key constructs related to additional language learning and the way in which these might inform EAL/D practices. In particular, I focus on the need to consider (a) the mediating role of languages and cultures in language learning, and (b) the need for an interpretive, reflective and reflexive stance towards learning, highlighting how these notions pertain to both student and teacher learning. Next, I discuss examples of teachers' work with students drawn from two case studies of EAL/D practice that explore these notions in a programme of ongoing practitioner research. I conclude by discussing the situatedness of teachers (and their students), the need to consider the personal interpretations of meanings that teachers make and that form their professional learning, and the need for a kind of reflexivity that will lead to the ongoing development of self-awareness as a basis for working in and with diversity.
With globalization and advances in communication technologies, the movement of people and their ideas and knowledge has increased in ways and at a pace that are unprecedented. This movement changes ...the very nature of multilingualism and of language, culture, and language learning. Languages education, in this context, needs to build on the diversity of languages and other semiotic modes that learners bring to the classroom, as well as their diverse biographies and trajectories of experience, knowledge, language, and culture. Equally, the context demands a reconceptualization of the role of teachers of languages. Teachers enact the teaching of particular languages in their local context as members of distinctive multilingual and multicultural communities. They bring their own particular repertoires of languages, cultures, and histories of experiences that shape their frameworks of knowledge, understandings, values, and practices. It is these frameworks of interpretive resources that they use in mediating language learning with students who, in turn, use their own interpretive resources. In this article I draw on collaborative research with teachers of languages to investigate teacher understanding of the preconceptions, often tacit, that they bring to their teaching practice in the diverse interlinguistic and intercultural contexts of primary and secondary school education in Australia. I describe an expanded view of language, culture, and learning, the three fundamental concepts in languages education. Discussion follows on debates about the appropriate knowledge base and whether discourses about "learning to apply formal knowledge" and "best practice" in teacher professional learning are sufficient to assist in the development of teachers' capability to interpret their own teaching and learning practices and their students' learning as acts of reciprocal meaning-making in the context of local and global diversity.
In school languages education in Australia at present there is an increasing diversity of languages and learners learning particular languages that results from a greater global movement of students. ...This diversity builds on a long-established profile of diversity that reflects the migration history of Australia. It stands in sharp contrast to the force of standardisation in education in general and in the history of the development of state and national frameworks for the learning of languages K-12 in Australia and indeed beyond. These frameworks have characteristically generalised across diverse languages, diverse learner groups and diverse program conditions, in particular, the amount of time made available for language learning. In addition, in the absence of empirical studies of learner achievements in learning particular languages over time, the development of such frameworks has drawn primarily on internationally available language proficiency descriptions (such as the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the International Second Language Proficiency Rating Scale, and more recently the Common European Framework of Reference) that were developed primarily to serve reporting and credentialing rather than learning purposes. Drawing on a description of the current context of linguistic and cultural diversity and on a brief characterisation of the history of curriculum and assessment framework development for the languages area, this article provides a rationale for acknowledging in the development and use of frameworks (such as descriptions of achievements) the diversity of languages that comprise the languages learning area in Australia and, in particular, the diverse learner groups who come to their learning with diverse experiences of learning and using particular languages. The Student Achievement in Asian Languages Education (SAALE) study provides an example of the development of descriptions of achievement that are sensitive to these dimensions of context. It discusses the rationale for such context-sensitive descriptions in relation to their potential purposes and uses at the language policy and planning and educational systems level, at the teaching and learning level, and in ongoing research. Author abstract, ed
This paper reports on a semester-long study that explored the experience of a group of local and international students from multiple disciplines, and their teachers, in a core Intercultural ...Communication undergraduate course of 550 students in which there is an orientation to learning, teaching and assessment that seeks to develop students' intercultural learning capabilities. To capture the experience of learning, teaching and assessment in a highly diverse Australian university, data were collected over the life cycle of the course. The research design was ethnographic and collaborative, involving the research team, members of the teaching staff, and members of the university's learning and teaching unit. The data include interviews with students and teachers, students' written assessments, and observations of weekly teaching staff meetings. The overarching finding of the study is that, to enable students to develop their intercultural learning capabilities, there is a need to rethink notions of experience and engagement, specifically to attend to the central role of language/s and culture/s in all students' experience of learning, teaching, and assessment. Analysed examples from the data are used to illustrate four specific guiding principles underpinning this (re)orientation to learning. The study was one of two case studies funded by the University of South Australia as part of a larger project: Developing English Language and Intercultural Learning Capabilities.
Transformations associated with the increasing speed, scale, and complexity of mobilities, together with the information technology revolution, have changed the demography of most countries of the ...world and brought about accompanying social, cultural, and economic shifts (Heugh, 2013). This complex diversity has changed the very nature of communication within and across languages, in society in general, and in education. These changes in turn require a reconceptualization of our approach to language/s education in ways that recognize a diversity of goals for people from different backgrounds, people who are learning a variety of languages in diverse settings and who may be interested in developing different capabilities and achieving different outcomes. In this article, we address the reconceptualization of the goals and outcomes of learning additional languages and processes for their formulation and realization. We will make explicit the educational values that underpin our position. Recognizing the immense diversity that the learning of additional languages in diverse contexts encompasses, our consideration is necessarily conceptual. The point of departure for our discussion is communicative language teaching, the dominant paradigm for language teaching for the past 40 years. We briefly trace its historical development and provide an account of some of the conceptual and theoretical expansions since its initial formulation. In light of this expansion we then discuss goals for learning additional languages by: (a) reaffirming the multilingual character of communication and learning to communicate, focusing on the exchange of meaning, (b) (re-) inserting the importance of personal development and aesthetics, and (c) recognizing the centrality of reflectivity and reflexivity in communication and learning to communicate. We conclude with a set of principles that are intended to capture the expanded nature of goals and their rendering for the purposes of teaching and learning.
PDF
