Michiko Weinmann

‘Asia Literate’ Learning in Global Contexts: Curriculum Perspectives on Asian Languages Education in Australia and Germany

The development of ‘Asia literacy’ is a widely-advocated goal in current educational debates of many Western countries. Within this broader objective, the subject discipline of languages can be identified as an area within Australian and German school curricula where attempts to integrate this competency have been strongly evident since the early 2000s. Drawing on the example of Asian languages education in the Australian and German contexts, this chapter presents a comparative case study outlining the reasons that both countries have in common for the advocacy of Asian languages learning, while identifying some key differences. While both the Australian and German curricula include statements that express an understanding that transgress traditional East-West dichotomies, overall they remain shaped by conventional imaginations of nation, language and culture. Curriculum writers need to recognise the complexities of linguistic and cultural difference more comprehensively, enabling them to move towards a broader pedagogy that shifts the teaching of Asian languages beyond Othering and limited repertoires of linguistics, pragmatics and culture.

Editorial: Australian TESOL contexts; a state in flux

The factors influencing the multiple contexts of English language provision in Australia are complex, and this issue of TESOL in Context holds a lens to some of them: the first of the three articles presents a historical overview of provision for English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D, formerly English as a Second Language or ESL) in Australia, the subject of the second is screening for EAL kindergarten children, and the third discusses issues of internationalisation in a K-12 school. Reading these we are reminded that as TESOL professionals we work in an environment of continual change, forced to respond in a frequently ad hoc manner to a number of pressures, including federal and state politics. As far back as 2002 Joe Lo Bianco expressed concern (in this journal) that EAL/D learner needs were still not being met at that time, and the three articles in this issue throw light on why this is still too often the case, despite recent legislative emphasis on a ‘fairer Australia’ (Australian Government, 2011) in which a stronger acknowledgement, understanding and support for linguistic diversity should provide the foundation for a socially just society.

Indigenous Languages Education in Victoria

Before colonisation, Australia was a linguistically diverse continent, with an estimated 250 Indigenous languages and about 500 spoken varieties of these languages. By 1980, a quarter of these languages had disappeared, a decline which continued over the years, with two-thirds of Indigenous languages gone by 1990. In 2001, only 17 Aboriginal1 languages were classified as actively spoken and used across all age groups.