David Caldwell

Linguistically Based Inequality, Multilingual Education and a Genre-Based Literacy Development Pedagogy: Insights from the Australian Experience.

This chapter addresses the issue of pedagogy and bilingual/multilingual education: how best to match teaching-and-learning approaches to the literacy development needs of students in multilingual educational settings. More specifically, it makes the case for what is known as the ‘Sydney school’ genre-based literacy development approach. It argues that, in providing explicit knowledge about the social functions, structures and stylistic properties of the modes of communication associated with academic success and social mobility, it has the potential to address the linguistically based social and economic inequality often experienced by students whose home language is other than the politically dominant, ‘majority’ language of the school. A brief account is provided of this ‘genre-based’ approach, followed by an account of its implementation in South Australia over the last decade or so in schools with large numbers of students who speak at home a language other than Australias majority language, English. Finally, outcomes for students involved in such genre-based literacy development are explored, with findings of a study reported which point to these students making significant advances in their literacy development. This study is of potential interest to South African educators, illustrating the long-term gains that genre-based pedagogies can afford socio-economically and linguistically disadvantaged learners.

The interpersonal voice: applying appraisal to the rap and sung voice

Following in the traditions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and social semiotics, this paper applies the linguistic system of appraisal to the mode of sound. More specifically, it aims to describe and compare the interpersonal properties of the rap and sung performance voices. In doing so, this paper also aims to provide analysts with a systematic, principled method by which to identifying interpersonal meanings in sound. Drawing on various aspects of the appraisal framework, and the respective sound features of the rap and sung voice, this paper offers three approaches. The first approach employs the grammatical frames used to classify the attitude sub-systems of affect, judgment, and appreciation. The second approach is more general in scope and analogizes from the sound systems of melody, time, and voice quality to the appraisal systems of attitude, engagement, and graduation, respectively. The third approach applies the concept of binding to the distinctive sounds of the rap and sung voice. The paper concludes by considering some future directions for this research.

Futures in primary science education – connecting students to place and ecojustice

After providing a background to futures thinking in science, and exploring the literature around transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum, we present a futures pedagogy. We detail case studies from a year-long professional learning action research project during which primary school teachers developed curriculum for the Anthropocene, focusing on the topic of fresh water. Why fresh water? Living in South Australia—the driest state in the driest continent—water is a scarce and precious resource, and our main water supply, the River Murray, is in trouble. Water is an integral part of Earth’s ecosystem and plays a vital role in our survival (Flannery, 2010; Laszlo, 2014). Water literacy therefore has a genuine and important place in the school curriculum. Working with teachers and their students, the Water Literacies Project provided an ideal opportunity to explore a range of pedagogical approaches and practices which connect students to their everyday world, both now and in their possible futures, through place-based learning. We describe the use of futures scenario writing in an issues-based transdisciplinary curriculum unit on the theme of Water, driven by Year 5 teachers and their students from three primary schools: two located on the River Murray and one near metropolitan Adelaide. All three schools focused on a local wetland. The research was informed by teacher interviews, student and teacher journals, student work samples, and teacher presentations at workshops and conferences. We report on two aspects of the project: (1) the implementation of futures pedagogy, including the challenges it presented to the teachers and their students and (2) an emerging analysis of students’ views of the future and implications for further work around the futures pedagogical framework. Personal stories in relation to water, prior knowledge on the nature of water, experiential excursions to learn about water ecology and stories that examine the cultural significance of water—locally and not so locally—are featured (Lloyd, 2011; Paige & Lloyd, 2016). The outcome of our project is the development of comprehensive adventurous transdisciplinary units of work around water and connection to local place.

Images of ‘Asia Literacy’: An Analysis of Online Representations

For more than two decades, the term ‘Asia’ has become strongly affiliated with the term ‘literacy’. In fact the term ‘Asia literacy’ has become common parlance for many Australians, particularly those in the communities of academia, education, politics and business. However, there is very little research to date that has closely analysed the textual representation of Asia literacy in our contemporary semiotic landscape. In response, this chapter examines the various ways in which the term ‘Asia literacy’ is currently articulated across a range of online digital texts. In other words, how and to what extent is ‘Asia literacy’ conceptualised, presented and valued in the Australian discourse community. To this end, the chapter draws on a small corpus of online digital texts, which, to various extents, engage with the topic of Asia literacy. In terms of the method of analysis, the chapter closely examines the linguistic and visual features of online texts using principles from social semiotics (Van Leeuwen, Introducing social semiotics. Routledge, London, 2005), systemic functional linguistics (SFL) (Halliday and Matthiessen, Introduction to functional grammar, 3rd edn. Edward Arnold, London, 2004), visual grammar analysis (e.g. Callow J, The shape of text to come: how image and text work. Primary English Teachers Association of Australia (PETAA), Newtown, 2013) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (e.g. Van Leeuwen, Critical discourse analysis. In Brown K (ed) Elsevier encyclopaedia of language and linguistics, vol 13, 2nd edn. Elsevier, Oxford, pp 290–294, 2006). The findings show a contrast between the close linguistic analysis and the visual grammar analysis. For the most part, the linguistic analysis reveals a diverse, dynamic and contemporary representation of Asia literacy. The visual representation of Asia literacy however is especially homogenised, presenting an essentialised Asia and a normative view of literacy, learning and schooling. By way of contrast, the visual grammar analysis is then compared with images representing Asia in a different context – an online travel website. In conclusion, the chapter considers future research directions, with particular reference to pedagogical contexts, and the role of critical and creative thinking in the context of Asia literacy.

Teaching Chinese Language for Asia Literacy: Chinese Teachers’ Experiences Teaching Australian Students

Despite the increasing focus on Asia in Australian education, little consideration has been given to the experiences of Asian language teachers teaching in low culturally diverse schools. This paper centres on the experiences of two Chinese language teachers working in a low culturally diverse private school in South Australia. Using their narratives, we have shown how experiences of teaching an Asian language in the context of Asia literacy as a cross-curriculum priority are shaped by contradictions and dilemmas in which experiences of diversity now take place in emergent spaces, associated with dynamic and intersecting cultural and symbolic capital, that transcend national borders. We suggest that this has key implications for thinking about the educational practice of Asia literacy through Asian language teaching.