Yvette Slaughter

The Rise and Fall of Indonesian in Australian Schools: Implications for Language Policy and Planning

The history of Asian language study in Australia has been about a struggle for recognition. For much of the twentieth century, xenophobia and racism ensured that few Asians were even allowed into A...

Community Languages and LOTE Provision in Victorian Primary Schools: Mix or Match?.

The introduction of LOTE programs in primary schools in Victoria, as part of the normal curriculum, dates back to the early 1980s with the introduction and government support of primary level community language programs. In 1983, the Victorian government employed the first supernumerary community language teachers in primary schools to aid in language maintenance and development for LOTE speakers. Initially, around 130 such teachers were employed in a small number of primary schools, supported by extra ethnic teaching aides and community language consultants (Ozolins 1993).

11. Mainstreaming of Italian in Australian Schools: The Paradox of Success?

In Chapter 11, Yvette Slaughter and John Hajek examine the unintended outcome of the mainstreaming of migrant languages in schools by focusing on the path of Italian in the Australian education system. Although Australia is an English-dominant country, hundreds of languages are spoken in communities across the nation. The challenge for the Australian education system has been to cultivate the linguistic competence that already exists within Australian society, as well as fostering second language acquisition among all students (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2009). Australia’s Italian community has been particularly successful in achieving the widespread introduction of the Italian language as a subject within the nation’s primary and secondary education system. This chapter highlights some of the intricacies and effects of the relationship between language communities, maintenance and transmission, and the mainstreaming of languages in the school system. It points to a concomitant decline in the maintenance and development of bilingualism among Italian background speakers, and the disappointing performance of Italian in the upper years of secondary education. These trends, and the reasons for them, need to be carefully considered and addressed in order for Italian, and other community languages, to properly thrive through the entire school cycle in Australia. They clearly illustrate the need for ongoing advocacy and oversight for both the transmission of Italian as a second language in schools and as a community language.

Bilingual Education in Australia

The Australian experience of bilingual education is composed of three separate audiences: Indigenous groups and their languages, immigrant groups and their languages (both of these groups seeking language maintenance and intergenerational vitality), and mainstream English speakers seeking additive language study. All these interests share a common aim of lobbying for more serious and substantial language education programs, but differ significantly in the purposes and context of their promotion of bilingual education. This chapter provides an overview of historical, political and educational influences on forms of bilingual education that have emerged, in the context of state and national language policy and practices, to meet the needs of Indigenous Australians, migrant communities, and Anglophones.

Recognizing Diversity: The Incipient Role of Intercultural Education in Thailand

Thailand has a long and consistent policy of denying concessions to a pluralist vision of its identity which would arise from formal recognition of differences, and has never embraced, at the official level, any discourse approximating multiculturalism. Instead, it has stressed the importance of minority assimilation to established and privileged norms, and succeeded in propagating a general perception of itself, both domestically and internationally, as ethnically homogenous. Despite this attempt to create an image of cultural homogeneity, as the first section of this chapter demonstrates, Thailand has a long history of diversity, from the polyethnic foundations of the Kingdom of Siam to the geophysical demarcation of its territory. Suppression of diversity in Thailand has resulted in ethnic stratification, the consequences of which reverberate throughout modern society. The second component of the chapter focuses on an education commission undertaken through the UNICEF Language, Education and Social Cohesion (LESC) Initiative, a component of the UNICEF Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy (PBEA) Programme. Activities undertaken through the LESC Initiative, and through this particular mapping exercise, represent important groundwork in creating a dialogue around difference and how it is represented and engaged with in the Thai education system. In the context of the exercise in curriculum mapping, some reflections on the relevance of the notions of multicultural education for the specific setting and historical circumstances of Thailand are elaborated.