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This paper reports on the perspectives of English language teachers and teacher educators on the most recent English language education policy and curriculum reform in Japan, implemented in preparation for hosting the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Previous research has comprehensively analysed how language ideologies based on national imaginaries, native-speakerism and deficit views of Japanese teachers’ pedagogy and practice continue to frame debates about English language education in Japan. Through select thematic episodes derived from the interview data with English language practitioners located in Japan, this paper brings into focus the views of English language educators who articulated insightful counter-positions to taken-for-granted understandings of effective English language use and teaching. The authors argue that in order to effect a paradigm shift in global English language education, in Japan and internationally, it is important to incorporate a critical examination of teacher perspectives that challenge and augment prevalent tropes about English language teaching and learning. The paper concludes with implications for addressing the policy-practice and theory-practice divides in English language education. It argues that a continued engagement with educator perspectives is an important space for bringing about a transformation of language ideologies and pedagogical change at the grass-roots level of the English language classroom.

For the last five decades, the development of “Asia-literate” students has been a key objective in Australian education policy. The contentions surrounding this educational goal have been well docu...

As this issue of TESOL in context goes to press, we are looking back on a period of close to 18 months since the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality for Australia. The immediate, farreaching and ongoing impact of the pandemic on education has been captured and documented in much academic and professional debate to date (Kenley, 2020; Zentrum für Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung Bamberg (ZLB), 2020). Restrictions on travel resulting from the pandemic have severely impacted teachers, students and teacher educators all over the world (Tran, 2020).

This paper reports on a study that investigated Australian pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) experiences in mobility programs undertaken in Santiago, Chile. Through the methodological lens of sense-making, our analysis aims to further current understandings of international teaching practicums and to examine how discursively (re)produced binary categories of cultural Self and Other continue to shape intercultural encounters. Our research suggests that there is a need to support PSTs in finding new ways to engage more deeply with the complexity of their experiences overseas, and their expanding sense of identity. This complexity might be explored further through a more critical interrogation of neo-colonial discourses that continue to frame the objectives of global mobility programs. The paper concludes by arguing that a conscious disruption of such inherent discourses is key in ensuring that international teaching practicums actually provide the transformative shifts in personal and professional experiences they are intended to generate.

Recent studies in multilingual and translanguaging pedagogies have shifted the focus from investigating how students engage their multilingual repertoires to exploring how teachers understand and implement these pedagogical directions in their practice. In this article, the authors report on a national online survey on the multilingual perspectives and practices of teachers of French in Australia. The overall goal of the survey discussed here was to comprehensively capture how teachers of French understand the teaching and learning of languages in general, and of French in particular. The study revealed several tensions between the language teachers’ beliefs and practice. While most of the survey participants expressed strong support for innovative pedagogies such as translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014), and keen motivation to engage the full multilingual repertoire of their learners, a closer reading of the data indicated that most of them felt restricted in their practice by “the normative terms and conditions of an understanding of languages education that remains rooted in parochial, monolingual and pecuniary perspectives” (Weinmann & Arber, 2017, p. 173). In particular, the findings indicate that (self-)perceptions of “non-native” language teachers as “culturally deficient” continue to frame the notion of what constitutes a “good” language teacher (Holliday, 2015). For teachers to feel more confident and better equipped to effectively implement translanguaging pedagogies in their practice, teachers’ perceptions of their own multilingual identities and how these are shaped within the systems they work in (Young, 2017) need to be better understood. Keywords: Languages teaching, languages education, translanguaging, native language teacher, non-native language teacher, linguistic repertoire, multilingualism, Australia

The impact of conversations about language, multilingualism and multiculturalism in Western education contexts—and their impact on student and teacher interaction—has been frequently remarked upon. There have been very few attempts, however, to explore the ways in which these norms and their underlying structures and behaviors play out in the practices of languages teaching. Through interrogating teachers’ conversations about their daily experience and practice, we discovered that some languages—and the teachers who spoke or taught them—were understood differently from others. These differences were produced and reproduced in complex interactions between race, class, education and Western hegemony, marking some languages and languages teachers as being more prestigious and knowledgeable than others. We argue that, in the transnational contexts of Australian schools, these discussions are framed within discourses that are raced, neo-colonial and neoliberal. They appear to be wrought within a world of dissolving national, linguistic and cultural boundaries that is experienced as unsettling and disempowering. Moreover, the languages teachers identities are shaped by the normative terms and conditions of an understanding of languages and languages education that remains rooted in parochial, monolingual and pecuniary perspectives. If we are to reorientate approaches to languages education, and develop a more sustainable and socially just approach in Australia’s multicultural schools, these conversations—and the norms and behaviors that frame them—need to be better understood.

Decolonising language education policy: Beyond the imagination of Francophone identities Key words: Africa, francophone identities, language policy, multilingualism In March 2018, the Macron government launched its language policy "Une ambition pour la langue française et le plurilinguisme", to counter the hegemonic place of English in the world and to boost the standing of French language education. Continuing the French government’s history of promoting French language and culture worldwide, the current policy of the Macron government has as its focus the promotion of ’francophonie’ in African countries: « Il y a bien longtemps que la langue française n’est plus uniquement française. Elle est d’autant, voire davantage africaine que française » (Macron, 20172) This paper is drawn from a larger research project that explores the objectives of this policy, and how teachers of French in various African countries understand, engage with and implement this policy in practice. The focus of this paper are the findings from a policy analysis, including supporting government documents such as media releases and presidential speeches, and corresponding curriculum documents. Engaging the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the findings revealed tensions between a conventionally imagined francophone world that continues to be conceptualised as mono-cultural, mono-lingual and mono-ideological; and multilayered perceptions of the place, intention and direction of French language education in a globalised world. This analysis brought to light the complex interplay of neo-colonial discourses of geography, hegemony and internationalisation which frame the document’s approach. It brought to view the ambivalent conditions which frame these language education policies, their engagement with the African speakers’ multilingual and multicultural identities and the teachers and learners from the margin to the ‘centre’. The authors contend that commitment to the ‘future of the francophonie’ and of ‘le plurilinguisme’ be supported by a more reflexive understanding of the interplay between crucial concepts which frame the policy’s approach to French language education (French nationalism, standard language and European French culture) and provide a stronger challenge to the neo-colonial and neoliberal assumptions which are central to its contention.

Global mobility programs for pre-service teachers are an increasingly integral component of many teacher education courses. Such programs are perceived as an important opportunity for pre-service teachers to engage with diversity and to develop skills to respond to increasingly multicultural and multilingual classrooms. Research into international teaching practicums has shown that student teachers develop intercultural awareness, inclusive teaching practices and flexibility, but global mobility programs can also reinforce cultural stereotypes, neocolonial attitudes and a sense of superiority and entitlement. This paper presents a comparative analysis of pre-service teachers’ experiences in two mobility programs—a German program undertaken in Laos, and an Australian program in Chile. Such a comparison has two aims: first, to explore and add to current understandings of transnationalism; and second, to examine how binary categories of self and other, which are historically constructed and discursively produced, continue to shape intercultural encounters From this arises the need to support pre-service teachers in finding new discursive ways to engage with the complexity of their experiences and their expanding sense of identity. &nbsp

Over the last two decades, there has been significant debate surrounding the potential benefits, or potential harm, generated from the provision of written corrective feedback (WCF) on the writing of language learners. The majority of research in the field has been conducted within a positivist paradigm, which often adopted experimental research designs that measured language development in the form of correct output of targeted linguistic items, with the output sometimes being limited to a single writing task. Through the use of an interpretive paradigm and a socio-culturally informed theoretical framework, this case study examines language development reflected by progression within the language learners’ zone of proximal development (ZPD), generated via the provision of direct WCF. Retrospective interviews provide rich qualitative data that highlight the experiences of participants as they process three different types of WCF. This case study found that WCF was not able to generate any significant shifts towards self regulation within the participants’ ZPD, and thus learning generated via WCF was, at best, minimal. The need for learners to collaborate in order to co-construct their ZPDs during both the processing of WCF and construction stage of writing tasks was identified. Pedagogical implications for language teachers are discussed.

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.

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.

This paper is drawn from a research project that investigates the relationship between teachers’ understanding of the religious identity of Asian background students, and recent Australian curriculum initiatives focused on religion and religious identification. Based on responses from an Australia-wide survey, and follow-up interviews from teachers and principals in several Australian states, the project examined the ways that Australian teachers understand, respond to and talk about the religious identities of their students, and the implications of these demands for teacher practice and education. This paper is concerned with the findings from the interview phase that for a significant number of teachers, notions of religion were often elided with culture and race, and often subsumed by broader notions of a nominal ‘white’ Australian culture. Research conversations appeared framed by an often Christian perspective and sense of self, as opposed to a putative and Asian religious and cultural other. We argue that a better understanding of the ways that teachers participate in discourses of representations about Asian religious identities negotiated by Australian diasporic communities has direct implications for the refinement of policy and for teacher professional learning. In the light of our findings, we further argue that there is a need for curriculum, teachers and researchers to move beyond an understanding of culture and identity that is based on monolingual, monocultural and Anglocentric perspectives that frame the foreign as the ‘exotic’ other, and define it through references to limited, tokenistic artefacts of culture, which are reinforced by iconic use of language to talk about culture, religion and identity.

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.