Marianne Turner

CLIL in Australia: the importance of context

Abstract Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been gaining in popularity and is influencing ways in which various non-European countries approach bilingual education. For example, some Australian bilingual programmes are now being officially referred to as CLIL programmes. Although CLIL methodology shows potential outside Europe, this article argues that certain aspects of CLIL should be subject to scrutiny before programmes are adopted in an Australian context. In the article, these aspects relate primarily to organisational and affective factors, which are considered to have a substantial influence on successful programmes. The article specifically addresses Australian primary and secondary public education because public bilingual education programmes may offer a way to address the high attrition rates and the decline in languages taught. The article will focus on ways in which CLIL arose and is defined through the European context for which it was designed. Then it will identify some of the bilingual programmes on offer in Australia and explore issues related to applying/expanding the CLIL approach to Australian mainstream education – English language dominance, language choice and human resources.

Beyond the ‘good teacher’: guiding pre-service teacher reflections on culturally diverse students

This article explores how reflective practice may be facilitated among pre-service teachers preparing to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. The significance of the mentor teacher’s ability to reveal her/himself as a reflective practitioner in order to promote student reflection is well documented. The article specifically addresses one teacher educator’s approach to offering mentor support with a focus on reflective practices related to cultural diversity. She explores how her ethnographic doctoral study on the classroom participation of adult South Sudanese students in different Australian learning environments has informed her own practice as a teacher, and ways in which her teaching philosophy and values were influenced by the sustained reflection needed to complete the study. By making explicit an aspect of her reflective practice, she aims to add to the growing body of literature on how to engage pre-service teachers meaningfully in reflection on their own classroom practice, especially in relation to teaching to diversity.

Making space for multilingualism in Australian schooling

Abstract In this article we introduce the special issue: Language(s) across the curriculum in Australian schools. The special issue includes a focus on English as an additional language in mainstream classes, Indigenous education, heritage languages and foreign languages, and we give background to these different – though frequently overlapping – contexts. By considering context, we seek to demonstrate the timeliness and importance both of the special issue and of a focus on the experiences of students, teachers, parents and members of the community in bilingual and multilingual initiatives. Despite the empirical focus being Australian schools, we understand that the findings may resonate with other setting where monolingual ways of thinking are dominant. We conclude this introductory article by providing the structure and overview of the special issue.

Content-based Japanese Language Teaching in Australian Schools: Is CLIL a Good Fit?

Japanese Language Teaching (JLT) is well established in Australia but the number of students studying Japanese has been declining. This decline is due to various factors, among them the rise of Mandarin as a language taught in schools and a reduction in government support for JLT. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a popular content-based teaching approach developed in Europe, is currently being trialled in Australian primary and secondary schools, and some of these schools have JLT programs. In Europe, CLIL has been particularly successful in improving learners’ conversational ability, and the embrace of Japanese CLIL programs in Australia is therefore positive. However, there are factors involved in teaching a particular language in a particular country or region which may influence the success of the approach. In this article I argue that issues related to JLT in Australia, such as the relationship between Australia and Japan, teaching resources, teacher bilingualism and linguistic distance, need to be carefully examined in order to maximise CLIL’s potential in a new context.

Translanguaging and named languages: productive tension and desire

ABSTRACT In this article, we address the epistemological conflict inherent in the relationship between named languages and translanguaging theory. Following with interest Turnbull’s (2016) reframing of foreign language education as bilingual education and García’s (2017) response, we see the logic of this reframing, but we also acknowledge García’s concern that the notion of deficit lies at the heart of language learning as it is commonly conceptualized, and this deficit construct sits uncomfortably within translanguaging epistemology. In the article, we draw on Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogical theory of language, Thibault’s (2011) distributed language view and the theoretical construct of desire as both a lack and an energy (Ahmed 2010) to suggest that the naming of languages needs to be incorporated into translanguaging theory in a way that acknowledges the social construct of ‘named languages’ as integral to the expansion of one’s linguistic repertoire as a whole. We make this suggestion in order to help develop translanguaging theory from a subaltern to a majority theory. We further suggest that language education can play a significant role in furthering the translanguaging project.

Integrating content and language in institutionally monolingual settings: Teacher positioning and differentiation

ABSTRACT Translanguaging pedagogy offers a way to differentiate between students’ varying linguistic repertoires when embedding an additional language across the curriculum. In this article I draw on positioning theory to show the relevance of teacher positioning to translanguaging pedagogy and differentiation. Differentiation is discussed in relation to qualitative data drawn from two Australian secondary schools. In one school a Japanese language teacher collaborated with a History teacher on a History unit, and in the other school three Japanese language teachers jointly taught a Geography unit. Findings revealed that the different ways teachers positioned their students influenced students’ use of the target language. Further, teacher positioning was found to lead to student differentiation in the first school but not in the second school.

Emergent identity and dilemmatic spaces: pre-service teachers’ engagement with EAL collaboration

Abstract Integrationist policies that promote the mainstreaming of English language learners are well established in many English-speaking countries. This has led to the embedding of English as an additional language (EAL) methodology in teacher education, and also to the notion of collaboration between English language teachers and content area teachers. Teacher positioning is integral to the processes of collaboration, and in this article it is argued that both sociocultural identity constructs and the notion of dilemmatic spaces can be used jointly to explore this positioning. A framework that draws upon these two theoretical perspectives is discussed. It was developed to investigate pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) perceptions of collaboration with EAL teachers, and is applied to three secondary PSTs who were undertaking an EAL methodology course in an Australian university.

The significance of affordances on teachers’ choices: embedding Japanese across the curriculum in Australian secondary schools

In Australia, although content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has been introduced in some mainstream schools, monolingual structures prevail. In this article, I suggest that translanguaging pedagogy may be a useful way of thinking about the integration of language and content in the Australian mainstream context, but that attention initially needs to be paid to affordances, or institutional opportunities and constraints. The qualitative study under discussion in the article investigated affordances associated with teachers’ choices around embedding Japanese across the curriculum in three Government secondary schools. Five teachers were observed using Japanese to teach – or support the teaching of – a subject area and four were interviewed. Significant affordances were found to be curriculum-related school structures, collaboration and CLIL training. Although these affordances differed from school to school, collaborative practices were found in the school structures of all three schools, and CLIL training was found to endow trained teachers with the authority to experiment with language and content integration in different ways.

Teacher legitimisation through language(s) use: towards a framework for language teacher education

ABSTRACT Language teachers are positioned differently depending on whether they are L1 or L2 speakers of the target language. In this article I suggest that, in language teacher education, it can be useful to think explicitly about this positioning as it pertains to both languages rather than just one. I propose a relational two-language continuum based on the constructs of authenticity and legitimacy. The objective of the continuum is to help pre-service foreign language teachers gain legitimacy through two languages in Australian language classrooms. Given the prevalence of monolingual educational structures in Australia, the continuum is primarily viewed as a tool to help a diverse cohort of pre-service teachers think about how to increase communicative target language use in mainstream language classrooms.