1.1 What the Book Is About
As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, schools are both engaging with, and attempting to prepare students for, ever-greater diversity. Language lies at the heart of this preparation because it is the way people communicate with each other and express themselves to the world. Language is also central to teaching and learning (e.g., Halliday, 1993; Vygotsky, 1987), but one languageâand rather limited ways of speaking itâcan be taken for granted and preside over others. Also, the norm, or standard by which students are measured tends to be monolingual rather than multilingual (e.g., GarcĂa & Li, 2014; Rymes, 2010), meaning that multilingualsâ ability to speak a language is judged by monolingual communication. Together, language dominance and monolingual standards reward monolinguals of a dominant language, and this can significantly influence the learning of languages both in the community and at school.
In Australia, the context of this book, English is overwhelmingly dominant as an institutional language, and other languages are generally considered in relation to their functional benefits, especially Asian languages (see Lo Bianco, 2014). This fits with a neoliberal kind of reasoning that Australian institutions, similar to so many other institutions around the world, have adopted. The reasoning highlights what Dardot and Laval (2013, p. 3) termed existence in âa world of generalized competitionâ where success requires a competitive advantage. However, only considering languages in relation to their utility may not have a marked effect on their current marginal status; English is widely understood to be a prestigious lingua franca, and can therefore be considered sufficient in a country like Australia (DjitĂ©, 2011). There are many other ways students can gain a competitive advantage in the workplace, not only through their language skills. Viewing languages through a narrow neoliberal frame does not do justice to all the benefits of engaging with them. An effort to broaden the frame is clear in the rationale for the first Australian national curriculum for languages:
Being able to communicate proficiently gives learners essential communication skills in the target language, an intercultural capability, and an understanding of the role of language and culture in human communication. It provides the opportunity for students to engage with the linguistic and cultural diversity of humanity, to reflect on their understanding of human experience in all aspects of social life, and on their own participation and ways of being in the world. (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority, 2011)
The rationale highlights the value of language as a resource for learning as well as for communication. It has been found, for example, that learning another language promotes the ability to give a variety of solutions to a problem (divergent thinking) and the ability to find original solutions (creative thinking) (see Baker & Wright, 2017 for a review). Rather than only focusing on the functional aspects of language, the rationale additionally highlights human interactions in a broader sense, and the way languages give access to a qualitative appreciation of different kinds of interactions and ways of knowing. It also allows for a critical study of the way language is part of our positioning, or our participation in the world. Languages offer a concrete way of reflexively engaging with both inequity and diversity, of seeing what may be similar and different from the inside out, of learning in different, constructive, engaging and identity-affirming ways.
The aim of this book is to apply the rationale to languages spoken in the community, as well as to languages that are taught at school, and generate an overarching framework that can be used for the inclusion of both across the curriculum in schools. Separating the use and learning of heritage languages (languages students âinheritâ as part of their cultural/linguistic background) and school-based target languages can be artificial, and this will be clear in the settings discussed in the book. My hope is to offer a framework that links the leveraging and expanding of studentsâ language resources in a practical, student-centred and theoretically coherent way that also prioritises spaces for the critiquing and disrupting of linguistic hierarchies.
The Australian context is one of institutional monolingualism and student diversity, and is the backdrop against which I consider cross-curricular language use and learning. In this context, student diversity not only relates to the rich variety of languages students speak, but also to their diversity of experiences with language. They may speak a heritage language fluently, have limited exposure to it (grandparents might speak it but parents might not) or only have exposure to English outside school. Languages taught in schools, referred to in this book as target languages, may or may not be studentsâ heritage languages. The context can be consideredârather looselyâone of elective bilingualism (ValdĂ©s, 2003). Elective bilinguals choose to learn a language and circumstantial bilinguals are required to learn a language through circumstanceâthey may have moved to a country where their language is not spoken outside the home or community domain. A great number of students with a heritage language are born and raised in Australia and, if they are fluent in English, they can frequently choose whether or not to engage with their heritage. As ValdĂ©s (ibid.) pointed out, over time, circumstantial bilinguals may shift to the dominant language and lose the minority language. This language attrition can worsen with subsequent generations (see Eisenchlas, Schalley, & Guillemin, 2013).
A multilingual approach for all students, even in situations where teachers do not speak the language(s) entering the classroom, is the position taken in the book. In the words of Lo Bianco (2014, p. 17), âacknowledging multilingualism and multi-literacy throughout the academic and administrative operations of education can enhance the quality, seriousness and equity of education for all learners, not just for those who were brought up multilinguallyâ. The following question shows how this acknowledgement (and affirmation) can be related to contexts where institutional monolingualism predominates:
The approach taken in the book is inclusive of various kinds of exposure to different languages. The terms âheritageâ and âforeignâ are used as a way of showing in a very broad sense whether or not students have a connection to the language outside of school: âheritageâ indicates that they do and âforeignâ indicates that they do not. This connection sits more comfortably on a continuum than in distinct categories; the terms are only employed to highlight the significance of differences in access to (and identification with) a language outside school. The terms are also reflective of different ways language can be approached in schools. For example, heritage languages may be discouraged at school as part of a de facto English-only policy and foreign languages may be studied as a subject area rather than used as a cross-curricular resource and/or mode of communication. Understanding language differently can be a useful step in formulating a school language policy (or a classroom policy for a teacher) that takes a systemic approach to multilingualism. A systemic approach refers to the use and learning of languages across the curriculum for different purposes but with a common thread. This thread is called multilingual stance in the book, and its implementation is a core theme.How do we promote multilingualism in mainstream schools where the pursuit of another language may be considered a benefit but not a priority in wider society, and heritage language attrition is common?
The framework explained in the book, a multilingual practices framework, shows the relationship between a multilingual stance (or a school/classroom-based language policy), student engagement with languages and institutional structures and pedagogies. These three dimensions interact to produce opportunities to learn. The framework is embedded in stakeholder experiences withâand understanding ofâlanguage, and also the learning environment. The influence of identity and power dynamics on the use and learning of language is also taken into account. The framework was designed to assist in considering what kinds of structures and pedagogies may be beneficial in different kinds of mainstream settings when taking a multilingual stance and working with a great range of student (and community) engagement. In generating the framework, I sought to understand what I was seeing in Australian schools through the lens of sociocultural and sociolinguistic theories, and with the assistance of literature on bilingual education, teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and second-language acquisition research.
The theories and research that influenced the thinking behind the framework are set out in Part One of the book. The application of the framework to four different studies I conducted across different settings in the Australian mainstream school context is the subject of Part Two. These settings include (1) generalist primary classrooms with a high number of heritage-language students, (2) a whole-school primary bilingual programme, (3) teacher-driven secondary content-and-language-integrated learning (CLIL) initiatives and (4) a structured, secondary CLIL programme. The diversity of the student cohorts, widely varying degrees of language proficiency in different languages, the mainstream (non-selective) nature of programmes and the degree to which the dominant languageâEnglishâwas used as the medium of communication by students were similar in all the settings. Part Three discusses different teaching and learning objectives and ways in which the multilingual practices framework can assist in grasping opportunities to learn from a student-centred perspective.
1.2 A Monolingual View of Language
The promotion of multilingualism in mainstream, institutionally monolingual settings is a move away from monolingual vi...