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ABSTRACTThe increasing diversity of learners and teachers of languages (of both English as an Additional Language or Dialect [EAL/D] and Languages) coincides with major efforts to reconceptualise the nature of additional language learning towards multilingual and intercultural orientations. In this paper I first describe the policy context of EAL/D in Australia, which shapes the reality of EAL/D provision and practices. I then discuss some expansions of key constructs related to additional language learning and the way in which these might inform EAL/D practices. In particular, I focus on the need to consider (a) the mediating role of languages and cultures in language learning, and (b) the need for an interpretive, reflective and reflexive stance towards learning, highlighting how these notions pertain to both student and teacher learning. Next, I discuss examples of teachers’ work with students drawn from two case studies of EAL/D practice that explore these notions in a programme of ongoing practitioner research. I conclude by discussing the situatedness of teachers (and their students), the need to consider the personal interpretations of meanings that teachers make and that form their professional learning, and the need for a kind of reflexivity that will lead to the ongoing development of self-awareness as a basis for working in and with diversity.

A core consideration of any curriculum development undertaking must include an examination of how it is that learning and knowing are conceptualised. In this paper I interrogate the conceptual bases of the Australian Curriculum, specifically by discussing how learners and their life worlds, the enterprise of learning itself, knowledge and knowing and the curriculum as a whole are conceptualised. I conclude with a reflection on the consequences to reform when such a consideration is absent.

This paper reports on a project of structural and curriculum change in the Languages learning area in three Australian schools that implemented new models of Languages provision over a 3-year period and seeks to examine the ways that school cultures influence processes of change. The project adopted a qualitative collective case study approach that involved collaboration between teachers, school leadership and the research team on activities related to implementing the models, including a contextual analysis of policies and structures, collaborative curriculum planning and implementation, planning of interventions relevant to each site, monitoring, and ongoing evaluation and annual reporting. It also collected structural data in the form of school profiles, including information about the school context and learner groups, curriculum data, including program documentation, resources, student work samples, tasks and assessment data, and teacher and student evaluation data. Interviews were conducted with participating teachers, school leaders and students on a continuous basis, gathering each participant’s perspectives on the process of change over time. The paper examines the ways that the culture of schools, and in particular the structures that existed in the schools in relation to timetabling, the organisation of curriculum, the planning and enactment of teaching, learning and assessment and the approach to staffing, influenced what was possible in terms of change and ultimately the sustainability of change, particularly in relation to a learning area that is perceived to be ‘specialist’.