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The 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.

This paper reports on a semester-long study that explored the experience of a group of local and international students from multiple disciplines, and their teachers, in a core Intercultural Communication undergraduate course of 550 students in which there is an orientation to learning, teaching and assessment that seeks to develop students' intercultural learning capabilities. To capture the experience of learning, teaching and assessment in a highly diverse Australian university, data were collected over the life cycle of the course. The research design was ethnographic and collaborative, involving the research team, members of the teaching staff, and members of the university's learning and teaching unit. The data include interviews with students and teachers, students' written assessments, and observations of weekly teaching staff meetings. The overarching finding of the study is that, to enable students to develop their intercultural learning capabilities, there is a need to rethink notions of experience and engagement, specifically to attend to the central role of language/s and culture/s in all students' experience of learning, teaching, and assessment. Analysed examples from the data are used to illustrate four specific guiding principles underpinning this (re)orientation to learning. The study was one of two case studies funded by the University of South Australia as part of a larger project: Developing English Language and Intercultural Learning Capabilities.

Understanding and working with the complexity of second language learning and use in an intercultural orientation necessitates a re-examination of the different theories of learning that inform the different schools of second language acquisition (SLA). This re-examination takes place in a context where explicitly conceptualizing the nature of learning in SLA has not been sufficiently foregrounded. It also necessitates understanding how language itself, as the substance or object of learning a second language, is conceptualized. Neither the theorization of learning, nor of language on its own is sufficient to provide an adequate account of second language learning for contemporary times. In particular, this paper argues that views of language and learning derived solely from the field of (applied) linguistics are not sufficient to address the complex language learning needs of contemporary times and that a more interdisciplinary approach to language and learning is required. It is this interdisciplinary understanding that provides the basis for views of both language and learning that we consider to be necessary within an intercultural orientation. In particular, the paper will emphasize the interpretative nature of learning and the ways that such a view contributes to our understanding of learning in language education. From this perspective, the process of learning to communicate in a second language can be characterized as involving both a ‘moving between’ linguistic and cultural systems and an acknowledgement of the role of mutual interpretation in exchanging meanings through the acts of both communicating and learning.

In this paper we draw attention to people who journey from one temporal and spatial setting towards another in the 'South', who aspire to a reconfigured sense of belonging, prosperity and wellbeing, and their multilinguality and multilingualisms. Through three vignettes of journeys we illustrate how in changing of place that linguistic diversities are encountered and mediated. During moments of North-South and South-South entanglement and exception we argue that multilingualisms re-ecologise along horizontal axes of conviviality, and / or re-index along vertical axes of exclusion. We suggest that 'rooting' and 'rerouting' multilingualisms are not only multidimensional, but they are also multifaceted as people who choose or are obliged to experience dis-placement, undertake journeys of anticipation of replacement into regulated or unregulated situations. Multilingualisms in the memories, dreams, complex selves, materiality and complicities of coping have yet to receive sufficient attention from linguists. We attempt to capture these aspects and suggest that southern multilingualisms have much to offer and entice northern multilingualisms. We illustrate how closely integrated are multilingual repertoires with mobilities and temporalities of dislocation and change; with loss, nostalgia and the anticipation of new beginnings; and with multi-scaled complicities between individuals as they re-calibrate lives in turbulent and changing circumstances.

Transformations associated with the increasing speed, scale, and complexity of mobilities, together with the information technology revolution, have changed the demography of most countries of the world and brought about accompanying social, cultural, and economic shifts (Heugh, 2013). This complex diversity has changed the very nature of communication within and across languages, in society in general, and in education. These changes in turn require a reconceptualization of our approach to language/s education in ways that recognize a diversity of goals for people from different backgrounds, people who are learning a variety of languages in diverse settings and who may be interested in developing different capabilities and achieving different outcomes. In this article, we address the reconceptualization of the goals and outcomes of learning additional languages and processes for their formulation and realization. We will make explicit the educational values that underpin our position. Recognizing the immense diversity that the learning of additional languages in diverse contexts encompasses, our consideration is necessarily conceptual. The point of departure for our discussion is communicative language teaching, the dominant paradigm for language teaching for the past 40 years. We briefly trace its historical development and provide an account of some of the conceptual and theoretical expansions since its initial formulation. In light of this expansion we then discuss goals for learning additional languages by: (a) reaffirming the multilingual character of communication and learning to communicate, focusing on the exchange of meaning, (b) (re-)inserting the importance of personal development and aesthetics, and (c) recognizing the centrality of reflectivity and reflexivity in communication and learning to communicate. We conclude with a set of principles that are intended to capture the expanded nature of goals and their rendering for the purposes of teaching and learning.

This paper examines the development of the First Language Maintenance and Development (FLMD) program in South Australia. This program is the main language policy activity that specifically focuses on language maintenance in government primary schools and has existed since 1986. During this time, the program has evolved largely as the result of ad hoc changes, often resulting from decisions made outside the immediate scope of language maintenance provisions. The program was initially introduced as a general reform of language education in primary schools but eventually became a program focused specifically on language maintenance. The paper traces the ways that ad hoc changes have shaped the program, and how these have shaped the program over time. As a result of these changes over time, first language maintenance has moved from being an integrated focus within core language policy to being a peripheral language policy activity. As a result, although the FLMD represents an aspect of South Australia's language policy, it does not have either a clear position within that policy nor does it have a clearly developed focus of its own.

In situating the challenges in languages education policy in Australia in current times, I give an account of policy and curriculum development for the learning of languages in school education. In so doing, I highlight (1) the integral relationship between languages education, literacy and multiculturalism policies; (2) the meaning and consequences of the absence of a national policy on languages; and (3) the fundamental challenge of addressing the pervasive "monolingual mindset", particularly in school education, as a major site for the formation of knowledge, understanding and values. I then draw on my recent experience of working on the framing of Languages as a learning area in the national curriculum, which is currently being developed in Australia, to illustrate the complexity of doing languages policy and curriculum policy work and the efforts to resist the forces towards simplification. I conclude with a discussion of the challenge of "unlearning" monolingualism, both for those involved in the field of languages education and for those involved in education in general.

The increasing influence of sociocultural theories of learning on assessment practices in second language education necessitates an expansion of the knowledge base that teacher-assessors need to develop (what teachers need to know) and related changes in the processes of language teacher education (how they learn and develop it). Teacher assessors need to acquire concepts from diverse assessment paradigms; they need to learn to use these concepts in developing, using and analysing assessment procedures and results; they need to exercise critical perspectives on their own assessment practices for particular purposes in diverse contexts, especially in seeking to do justice to all in education. In this paper I argue that, to develop language assessment literacy with the dual goals of transforming teacher assessment practices and developing teacher understanding of the phenomenon of assessment itself and themselves as assessors, it is necessary to reconsider both the knowledge base and the complex processes of language teacher education. I draw on projects I have conducted on developing and investigating teacher understanding and practices in second language assessment, to discuss the need to work with the often tacit preconceptions, beliefs, understandings and world-views about assessment that teacher-assessors bring to teacher professional learning programs and that inform their conceptualizations, interpretations, judgments and decisions in assessment. I discuss the need in developing language assessment literacy for processes that develop teacher-assessors' capability to explore and evaluate their own preconceptions so as to become aware of how they interpret their own assessment practices and their students' second language learning. Through these processes they develop a deeper understanding of the interpretive nature of assessment and their own self-awareness as assessors. (Contains 1 note.)

Developing curricula for languages in the context of the Australian Curriculum is a complex undertaking that needs to address a number of demands. These include: the nature of language-and-culture learning for contemporary times within an increasingly diverse linguistic and cultural world; the goals of mainstream education and the "given" curriculum constructs that pertain to the curriculum as a whole and languages curricula as a part of that whole; the process of transposing concepts from current research into a design for language learning for diverse learners and diverse languages; and the need to achieve jurisdictional and professional consensus about the nature and extent of change that is sustainable and productive for the present and into the future. Drawing on these demands and my experience as an actor in the process of development, I discuss the rationale for and the major features of the design for languages. I conclude with a reflection on the evolving process of curriculum development and particularly on implications for teachers.

In school languages education in Australia at present there is an increasing diversity of languages and learners learning particular languages that results from a greater global movement of students. This diversity builds on a long-established profile of diversity that reflects the migration history of Australia. It stands in sharp contrast to the force of standardisation in education in general and in the history of the development of state and national frameworks for the learning of languages K-12 in Australia and indeed beyond. These frameworks have characteristically generalised across diverse languages, diverse learner groups and diverse program conditions, in particular, the amount of time made available for language learning. In addition, in the absence of empirical studies of learner achievements in learning particular languages over time, the development of such frameworks has drawn primarily on internationally available language proficiency descriptions [such as the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the International Second Language Proficiency Rating Scale (ISLPR), and more recently the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)] that were developed primarily to serve reporting and credentialing rather than learning purposes. Drawing on a description of the current context of linguistic and cultural diversity and on a brief characterisation of the history of curriculum and assessment framework development for the languages area, I provide a rationale for acknowledging in the development and use of frameworks (i.e. descriptions of achievements) the diversity of languages that comprise the languages learning area in Australia and, in particular, the diverse learner groups who come to their learning with diverse experiences of learning and using particular languages. The Student Achievement in Asian Languages Education (SAALE) study provides an example of the development of descriptions of achievement that are sensitive to these dimensions of context. I discuss the rationale for such context-sensitive descriptions in relation to their potential purposes and uses at the language policy and planning and educational systems level, at the teaching and learning level, and in ongoing research.

The evaluation of the Professional Standards Project (PSP) highlights its success both as a set of resources that provided the catalyst for professional conversations and learning and the National and State processes of facilitation of these conversations and learning, as well as the classroom-based investigations undertaken by teachers. For the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA) the PSP provided the necessary National and State processes for inviting teachers of languages to begin to experiment with using the professional teaching standards that had been developed by them, as the profession, for the profession. As such, it became a common activity for all State/Territory MLTAs that allowed for ongoing learning about the actual use of the professional standards. As one who has been and continues to be intimately involved in the development of the professional standards themselves and the PSP and allied projects including the Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice (ILTLP) Project and the project to develop a guide for the teaching and learning languages, the author engages in a moment of reflection. In so doing, she focuses on two aspects: (1) the professional standards; and (2) teachers, their lifeworlds, their interpretations of meaning, and effecting change.

Teachers of languages, as well as educators in general and employers, increasingly recognise the importance of developing intercultural capability. This recognition, however, brings the question of how this is evidenced as an outcome of learning. The assessment of this capability poses a range of theoretical and practical challenges. I begin with a description of languages learning within an intercultural orientation and a model for understanding assessment. I then discuss issues of conceptualising and defining the construct, as integral to the process of assessment. Next, I consider issues in eliciting intercultural capability in a proposed framework that includes assessment as both communicative performance (elicited in "critical moments") and meta-awareness (elicited in commentaries). To conclude, I discuss issues related to identifying and judging evidence of the development of the intercultural capability and warranting the inferences made about students' developing understanding. The discussion is based on the experience of ongoing studies investigating the assessment of the intercultural capability in learning languages and in international education.

This paper provides background to considering how to assess intercultural language learning. It describes why traditional views of assessment are not sufficient. Essentially, assessing intercultural language learning requires assessment of both students' performance of communication in the target language and how they understand and explain the intercultural (that is, the movement between two languages and cultures) to themselves. A set of features of assessment of students' intercultural capability is included.

This paper describes the need to reconceptualise teaching and learning programs for intercultural language learning. The shift is from concepts such as "content" and its "coverage" (intended to address "learner needs and interests") to developing programs focused on meaning making in interaction and on learners as meaning makers. Specific questions are provided to stimulate a reconsideration of programming practices.

The Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice (ILTLP) Project is a large scale, national professional learning program designed to extend the understanding and practice of language teachers with regard to intercultural language learning. The latter is an orientation to language learning that underpins the National Statement and Plan for Languages Education in Australian Schools (MCEETYA, 2005). This paper describes the ILTLP Project, its design, goals, and outcomes. It offers a rationale for and a description of an intercultural orientation.

The history of the role of assessment in policy-making for languages education in Australia over the past 20 years is characterised by a complex and shifting interface between language policy, curriculum and assessment. Three phases can be identified during which significant changes occur. These highlight an ongoing struggle for legitimacy for languages as an area of study and for its intrinsic diversity. Common themes in this account include the relationship and tensions between (1) language policy and general educational policy, (2) national and State/Territory-based educational developments in Australia, and (3) the influence and consequences of both inclusion and exclusion from nationwide assessment in education. The paper demonstrates the ways in which the dominant discourses at particular moments of history shape educational policies and practices which, in turn, operate to shape the place and status of languages learning in school education of children.

This paper addresses changing meanings attached to the concept of "community" in languages education in the school setting in Australia. The change consists of a shift from "community" as a necessary definitional category, created in the mid 1970s to mark the recognition of languages other than English used in the Australian community, to a recognition, in the current context of increasing mobility of people and ideas, of the need to problematise the concept of "community" towards working with the complexity of the lived, dynamic languages and cultures in the repertoires of students. Intercultural language learning is discussed as a way of thinking about communities in languages education in current times.

In the context of internationalisation, the delivery of higher education programmes increasingly combines open learning with collaborations among people of diverse languages and cultures. In this paper we argue that while the literature on international education focuses on mapping modes of delivery in international education, there is also a need to recognise that it is these modes, together with language and culture, which mediate the delivery of programmes. Drawing on data from a case study of collaboration between an Australian university and an educational institution in Malaysia, we argue that international education per force involves collaboration and that this collaboration is mediated.

Drawing on two major developments in languages education, namely communicative language teaching and frameworks of outcomes and standards, this address presents a reflection on "words" as the most basic resource of language teachers, and the way in which they are always open to interpretation and reinterpretation over time. With both developments, the focus has been on seeking to institute educational changes without considering the process of interpretation and the interpretive frames of reference that teachers bring to their work. This approach to development fails to address not only the central role of teachers as interpreters and makers of their own meanings that guide their actions, but also the ongoing intellectual project of developing understanding in and through education.

The internationalisation of education has become a major focus of international, national and institutional attention, reflected in a substantial and expanding literature on how internationalisation is manifested, how it might be promoted, its implications for areas such as government policy, strategic planning and management, educational quality, student mobility, teaching and learning, and the place of language and culture in teaching and learning. There is also general agreement in the literature on the need for internationalisation to include an "intercultural dimension". In this paper, we examine how we are to understand the "intercultural dimension" in higher education. Our approach is based on an analysis of current constructions of this dimension, to argue that these constructions are neither individually nor in combination capable of meeting the challenge of internationalisation. Drawing on recent studies undertaken at the University of South Australia, we propose culture as "intercultural" as an alternative construction. (Contains 1 figure and 2 endnotes.)

Criteria for judging performance are traditionally and unproblematically invoked as a resource to be used (1) to make the assessment requirements evident to learners and (2) to provide a tool for rendering teacher judgments consistent, reliable, and fair. This paper explores the use of criteria and standards in the process of teacher judgment of student performance. The analysis suggests that, beyond criteria, judgments are constructed by and construct teachers' professional identities. It also suggests that attending systematically to teachers' professional knowledge contributes to an understanding of how teachers construe performance, and the "construct" upon which assessments are based. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper describes how more than 40 languages gained and retained legitimacy as subjects for graduation from upper secondary schooling and for tertiary entrance selection in the South Australian educational system. Essentially the process required conforming with administrative, curriculum and community structures and fitting the mould of evolving language policies and generic frameworks. While the success of language communities in achieving this status is recognised, questions remain about overall uptake of languages and the fundamental rationale for maintenance.

In addressing the theme of transition in learning languages, describes aspects of three projects. Data are drawn from the projects to highlight issues in context, culture, and communication and principles that support transition and continuity in learning languages. (Author/VWL)

Addresses the following issues as they relate to the concept of standards in education: the content of standards, defining standards, setting standards, and using standards. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that the Australian Language Levels (ALL Guidelines should combine the sociocultural goals with the concept of cultural awareness and integrate them with the concept of intercultural goals at all stages of language learning. (Author/VWL)