Language Education in the School Curriculum

Issues of Access and Equity

Ken Cruickshank, Stephen Black, Honglin Chen, Linda Tsung, Jan Wright

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350069480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

There is widespread concern in all English speaking countries at the rapid decline in study of languages. The promise of 'languages for all' in the UK and North America in the 1970s marked a shift from languages as élite subjects for the privileged few, but this promise has not been fulfilled. This book explores the reasons for and solutions to this decline. More importantly, it looks at how these trends have been reversed in successful school programs and the implications of this for language education policy makers. The study draws on an analysis of data from 600 primary, secondary and community languages schools over six years and from detailed case studies in a representative sample of 45 successful schools. The book proposes a range of strategies to address the decline: from engaging classroom learning, assessment outcomes and embedding languages as central in school curriculum on the one level, to a mix of incentives and mandation for language study, especially at upper secondary school level. The authors explore the impact of learning languages on the thinking, educational experiences and outcomes of young people across a range of ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. They show the importance of having equal access to languages study in a world where young people will have increasingly more diverse working lives and argue that the gap in languages between policy and uptake is really a gap in the thinking of policy makers and government.

1

Issues in the Provision and Uptake of Languages

What’s the problem?

The relationship between social inequality and access to the study of languages is becoming a key issue in Anglophone countries (Baggett, 2016; Lanvers, 2017; Nikolov and Mihaljević Djigunović, 2011; Pufahl and Rhodes, 2011; Tinsley and Board, 2017). In the UK, evidence is growing of a social divide in access and attitudes to languages study. Students from poorer backgrounds are less likely to choose languages, more likely to be withdrawn from mandatory languages study (e.g. for remedial Maths and English support) and less likely to study languages to the GCSE (Board and Tinsley, 2014, 2015a, 2017; Tinsley and Dolezal, 2018). In the United States, lower-socioeconomic status (SES) elementary and middle schools are less likely to offer languages and these schools find it hardest to get qualified languages teachers (Pufahl and Rhodes, 2011). There is also underrepresentation of lower-SES, African-American and Latino students in modern languages classes (O’Rourke, Zhou and Rottman, 2017). The answers to why this happens are unclear. Some studies point to funding differences (Pufahl and Rhodes, 2011). Some suggest a social divide in attitudes, with lower-SES parents and students having less positive attitudes to languages study (Gayton, 2010). Others point to how teachers and the school leadership see languages as less relevant to lower-SES students: the argument being that students from lower-SES backgrounds don’t need languages because they will have fewer opportunities to travel and to use languages skills (Lanvers, 2017). To what extent does the social divide reflect a reality of low motivation and purpose for languages study or is this a construction ex post facto? Assumptions about low-SES students’ lower motivation and need for languages have been taken for granted. It is only in the last few years that the divide in access to and uptake of languages has been examined through a more sociological lens, looking at broader social contextual factors as well as their implications for policy decision-making at national and state levels and in schools.

This broader lens provides the means to see how access to languages has changed over time and how languages were not always the preserve of the more affluent. For example, the introduction of comprehensive schooling in the 1960s and 1970s in North America, the UK and Australia prompted a shift from languages study as the preserve of elite schools with prestige languages as a mark of distinction to much wider access to languages in government primary and secondary schools. In Australia, this goal of ‘languages for all’ led to a 500 per cent increase in students taking languages between 1970 and 2000 (Lo Bianco, 2009). This promise of universal access to languages seems to have evaporated (Hagger-Vaughan, 2016). Neoliberal policy education reforms have resulted in specialization and selection within the ‘comprehensive’ system and dezoning has provided parents with greater ‘choice’ of government schools in order to maximize academic opportunities for their children (Campbell, Proctor and Sherington, 2009). These reforms have produced a highly differentiated market, where those who can afford it take measures to ensure their children are in the ‘best’ schools. This has had a flow-on effect on languages provision, where few comprehensive (non-selective) government schools now offer languages beyond a mandatory 100 hours in the first years of high school. Thus, the goal of ‘languages for all’ appears in the current context to be a lost hope.

The added factor in this has been the wider social and cultural change impacting on the range of language resources in communities, the result of global flows of populations through immigration and more recently refugee populations (Lo Bianco, 2009). The 1960s and 1970s in Australia were also the time when government policy responded to the major post-war migration schemes, with initiatives acknowledging the multicultural and multilingual makeup of the society. The study of community/heritage languages capitalized on these resources and provided pathways to education for many students whose parents had not had such access. These languages, taught mainly to students in lower-SES comprehensive schools, provided access to tertiary education for many students whose parents had not themselves completed secondary school (Teese, 2013). Their legacy is the now over thirty-four languages and over sixty-three courses counted for tertiary entry, the majority of which are community languages (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2019). Enrolments, however, are small and shrinking and the largest community language, Chinese, has a 94 per cent enrolment attrition rate by final year of schooling (Orton, 2008).

Again, the 1970s policy promise of multiculturalism and multilingualism has not been realized in practice. In this context, what is the narrative of community/heritage languages and the interrelationship between class and ethnicity in access to languages?

The context: Four schools

In this chapter we illustrate the current state of languages in New South Wales (NSW) schools and the intersections of culture, language and social class as realized by language provision and access. We set up the problematic addressed in this book through case studies of languages study in four schools.¹ Forster High School is typical of government selective schools in our study: high-SES student enrolment, most speaking languages in addition to English in the home. Campbell High School, a regional secondary comprehensive, is typical of low-SES regional and rural comprehensives: majority Englishspeaking-background families and a single languages teacher. St Francis Primary School, a Catholic primary school in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, typifies the high-SES primary schools: majority Englishspeaking-background families with all students having access to languages but only thirty minutes a week. Cheswell Primary School, a low-SES government primary school in the inner west of Sydney, with 97 per cent of students speaking languages in addition to English at home, is an outlier. It is in a low-SES area but has a bilingual stream and strong languages program. Languages are central to the school curriculum. The school is a lighthouse school and attracts many students from out of area because of the programs. These four schools in their different ways point to the issues confronting students in their opportunities to access languages study.

Forster Selective High School

Forster is one of the forty-two government selective schools in NSW, most of them in Sydney (18 per cent of all government secondary schools). Forster is high-SES with 70 per cent of parents in the top quartile. Most of its 900 students come from a language background other than English, 40 per cent speaking Chinese at home. The post-school destination of all students is tertiary entry.

Forster has a strong languages program with a head teacher and nine languages teachers. The teachers are all experienced teachers and two are background speakers of the language. In Year 7 all students take 100 hours in French, Japanese, German or Chinese and then more classes in Year 8. In Year 9 there are strong elective classes in French. The languages program offers many extra-curricular activities with exchanges to Japan, France, Germany and China, and the school regularly hosts assistant teachers from Germany, France and China.

Wesley (pseudonym), aged fifteen, is a student in Year 10 at Forster HS. His mother is of Chinese background and his father Israeli. He grew up with Hebrew as his first language and learnt English when he came to Australia at the age of seven. He is studying Chinese and plans to keep studying it to Year 12 for his final Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination for tertiary entry.

My Mum speaks Cantonese and some Mandarin and so Chinese has always been a point for me. I go to China relatively frequently. My Chinese is fluent but it will be nicer to expand on it with my relatives. My parents are happy with this.

His road to Chinese, however, has been rocky. He learnt Italian in primary school: ‘It was negligible … I only remember numbers and colours.’ He studied French for the compulsory 100 hours languages study in junior secondary school, and it wasn’t until Year 8 that he could study Chinese.

It’s hard to develop languages in high school because it’s not compulsory in primary, not like most countries in the world. Then it’s compulsory in Year 7 and 8. If you have kids who aren’t that keen, you cannot move ahead. You need that continuity in a subject.

He said he is one of the few studying Chinese who actually wanted to do it. In his class of thirty, he said that most are studying because their parents make them. He reported liking Chinese not only because of the teacher but also because of the relevance to his extended family. Sarah, one of Wesley’s friends, with both parents of Chinese background, is studying French in Year 10. She chose French in Year 8 because her parents wanted her to do it.

My parents have a kind of romanticised view of French. It’s this international language. I could join the United Nations or something (laughs).

She kept going with French because of the cultural aspects, because ‘I really like learning languages’ and also the school has three-week language learning overseas tours every second year. She also practises her French with her piano teacher whose husband is French. Both Wesley and Sarah are at the point of deciding whether to take languages for their final exam in Year 12. The issue of marks and the difficulties with studying a language was a common theme in all our interviews with senior students. As Sarah says:

The others in the class are better than me but I will keep on with French even though I know I won’t get the marks I want. To be honest, the focus on the HSC marks, it kills my desire to study languages, they are difficult because they’re something that’s so unfamiliar.

Wesley is also going to choose Chinese despite the problem with marks.

I know there’ll only be four or five of us [studying Chinese] next year. It was easy in Year 8 and 9 but now we’re … like … testing this HSC type of structure where the class is more intense and you can begin to see the difficulty in the jump between the Year 10 syllabus and the Year 11 syllabus. There’s the other reason too. Most kids in Year 11, they choose subjects they can get a 95 in rather than a 90 in the HSC. They’ll take that any day. The parents don’t think Chinese is important in Year 11. They think okay now it’s Physics, Chemistry. Chinese isn’t important. It’s not going to rank very well. So the Chinese classes go from being full classes in Year 10 to about four in Year 11.

Jack is a student in Year 7 doing the 100 hours compulsory language in Japanese, last school period on a hot Friday afternoon. The teacher has the thirty students practising interviews with each other about personal details. They revise key vocabulary and then move into pair work. She then gets them to switch pairs, do a second interview and jot down notes. The lesson is interactive and engaging. Jack intends to do Japanese in Year 9.

I like it. I’m good at it and why not? I like the teacher, especially when she tells us about her growing up in Japan. Mum and Dad, we’re going there next year for holidays.

Forster is typical of the government selective schools with its strong languages program and the opportunity for continuity of languages study from Year 7 to Year 10, and for many students in Year 12.

Campbell High School

Campbell is a regional comprehensive high school with 320 students; it is lower-SES with two-thirds of parents in the lowest quartile. Just under 20 per cent of its students are Indigenous and another 20 per cent have a language background in addition to English. It is what is called a ‘residual’ comprehensive school, with many local students attending selective and other schools out of area. Campbell has one full-time languages teacher, John, a German teacher who retrained in Chinese. He teaches the mandatory 100 hours to all students in Year 7 and Margo, a generalist, also teaches two small elective French classes in Years 9 and 10. Campbell has taken up the discourse of Chinese as a language of trade and opportunity, and the principal and languages teacher are working to make the school languages a marker of distinction in competing for student enrolments in the context of school-based management. According to John, languages ‘struggle’ at the school.

There’s no continuity from teaching Chinese in Year 7 to elective languages in Year 9 [no languages were offered in Year 8]. There’s competition from other elective subjects, you know, photography, music, graphic design.

For Alan, the school principal, the switch from French to Chinese as the mandatory 100 hours language is a deliberate decision to enhance the profile of the school, with the hope that it might be the first step in establishing the school as a designated specialist languages school. Chinese is the language of choice because of ‘the future-proofing needs of our students out in the employment force’. Chinese will ‘set them up for employability over other people and that’s important’. As John comments:

I think he’s looking for a distinction; it’s looking for something to sell. I think when you’re looking at different products the different schools are selling, some schools are looking down the line of sports high schools, there are IT schools, performing arts schools. So I think it’s looking for a niche.

The school is typical of lower-SES secondary schools we visited: a single languages teacher focusing on the mandatory Year 7 or 8 classes. It is different because of the commitment of John, the languages teacher, and Alan, the principal, to the discourse of Asian languages and the engagement with the neoliberal language of the market, rarely apparent in working-class schools. Interview data from parents and students were mixed, with positive and negative comments in relation to the value of languages study. This is interesting because we found that staff in many schools believed that languages have no value or relevance for lower-SES parents and students. Our interviews at Campbell also suggest a greater diversity of languages in immediate or extended families, which was not evident in the school’s demographics or in the talk about languages by the staff and principal. Students mention, for example, backgrounds in and/or some family members speaking Danish, Serbian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, French and Hungarian.

Samantha is fifteen. She studied French in Year 7 for the compulsory 100 hours and has chosen it as an elective in Year 9: ‘I just like the culture and friends and stuff and I just thought learn a different language … just something new to learn.’ She says that French might be good for travelling one day and is ‘something to back you up as a job career future thing’. According to Alan, the school principal, the elective French class appears to attract more academically oriented students, those with ‘tertiary aspirations … the sort of kids you want to see in any class’. Aiden in Year 7 is less diffident. He will choose Chinese to study as an elective after Year 7 if it is available. Echoing John, he says, ‘China’s our future, like come on.’ When asked if he knows anyone who is Chinese, he says ‘yes’ and then ‘only you’, nodding to one of the researchers.

We asked Pete, one of the parents, about his son studying Chinese. ‘Yeah, it’s fine with me if he wants to. I never got the chance when I was at school. It was only the kids in the top classes who studied languages. For me … I tend to prioritise the reading, writing and arithmetic higher than the Chinese. But he likes it.’ Later on, he comments on the lack of relevance of languages. ‘We’ve been to Bali a few times and we only needed to speak English. Foreign languages are foreign to kids. They don’t have to learn other languages. They don’t necessarily hear other languages as such, unless your parents are foreign.’

John’s Chinese classes are very interactive: student ‘engagement’ in the language and Chinese culture is fundamental to his purpose to make Chinese meaningful to their lives. He uses school excursions to Chinatown in Sydney, stories and photographs of his own experiences in China, and visits by native Chinese speakers. John was an experienced teacher of German who chose to retrain in Chinese and is now committed to that language with regular visits to China and a wealth of resources to draw on including interactive games (often computer-based) and brush painting (calligraphy). The classroom is full of productive noise. Chinese has its own homeroom with interactive whiteboard; walls are covered with pictures of ideographs and pages from Chinese stories. When we told John about Pete’s comments, he replied:

That’s just the reason why we have languages. Studying Chinese gives the kids a chance to know about life and cultures outside Campbell; parents may not have had the chance to study languages but they’re happy for their kids to have this opportunity. If you engage them in the language they see the purpose, they love it.

St Francis Primary School

St Francis is a Catholic primary school with 300 students (and growing) in a beachside suburb close to Sydney Central Business District (CBD). The school is in a high-SES area: 53 per cent of families are in the top quartile. Most children come from English-speaking backgrounds and have little access to languages other than English outside the school. Typical of many higher-SES primary schools, St Francis has a parent-funded languages program. The Italian teacher, Tania, was a grade teacher at the school and took on the position teaching Italian. In the beginning and when external funding was available, the program lasted for one hour for each class but dropped to thirty minutes when this funding stopped. The school values the program but both Tania and the principal, Sue, admit it is more language ‘awareness’ than language learning because of the limited time children have to learn each week. Languages are not a part of the primary curriculum and most children in mid- to low-SES government and non-government schools have little or no access to languages. Italian is not a community language at the school and only one of two students had any outside links with the language. Tania is realistic about what she can achieve.

It’s more the cultural awarene...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• About the Authors
• Glossary
• 1 Issues in the Provision and Uptake of Languages
• 2 Principals’ Perspectives on the Study of Languages
• 3 Secondary School Language Teachers’ Identities and Experiences
• 4 Being a Languages Teacher in NSW Primary Schools
• 5 Parental Perceptions and Attitudes to Language Study
• 6 Student Attitudes to Languages Study
• 7 Language Provision in Primary Schools
• 8 Secondary School Languages
• 9 Teaching Chinese in Australia: A Case Study
• 10 Languages Curriculum and Change
• References
• Index
• Imprint