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The term ‘CLIL’ has been used in Australia for over a decade, and the approach has helped to invigorate languages education in both primary and secondary schools. In particular, the flexibility of ...

For many years now, knowledge production at universities and in countries like Vietnam has been framed by centre/periphery discourses. In this paper, we suggest that interpreting academics’ researc...

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 fore...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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 distan...

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...

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 relat...

In the culturally diverse Australian context, the relationship between culture, community and learning is a significant factor in educational outcomes. We argue that teachers and service providers can assist refugee students by being mindful of the students' negotiation of widening circles of community rather than by viewing the learning environment as independent of students' orientation to community. Data for this paper is derived from an ethnographic study of adult south Sudanese engaged in three different Australian learning environments. The concepts of social capital, interdependent self-construal/conjoint agency and active versus passive settlement styles are used to explore students' sense of belonging to, and negotiation of, different communities in relation to learning. Participants' engagement with learning is mediated through these different levels of community – an immediate ethnic group, a south Sudanese community and the wider Australian community. Active participants in the learning enviro...

This article highlights student co-regulation of teaching practices as a way of exploring how L2 students' language and pedagogical needs can be met in university support classes. Integration rather than assimilation – or adapting to the needs of the students rather than leaving students to face the exigencies of the new learning environment alone – is the focus of the article. Data are taken from a qualitative study of south Sudanese former refugees attending an Australian university. In this study it was found that teachers used their authoritative position to adapt their teaching to the students' apparent needs to differing degrees. Students benefitted from some modifications in teaching practices, but their ambivalent reactions to discussion-based teaching, in particular, proved to be an obstacle to their learning in the support classes.