Realising the
Pedagogical Potential of Multilingual Pre-service Primary Teachers
Dr
Jacqueline Coleman
(Australian Catholic University)
Abstract
This paper
reports on a
small, qualitative study undertaken by an early career researcher in an
Australian university into the meanings which multilingual and
bilingual pre-service
teachers attach to their linguistic ‘funds of knowledge’
(Moll, Amanti, Neff and
Gonzalez, 1992) in relation to their university studies, and to their
emerging
identities as teachers. Current pedagogical best practice in Australia
indicates
that drawing on students’ existing funds of knowledge in teaching
and learning
results in increased intellectual quality, such as higher order
thinking skills,
and higher academic outcomes. However, the participants in this study
did not conceptualise
their linguistic abilities as having any value in relation to their
higher education.
They also appeared to tacitly accept reported institutional and
pedagogical practices
which marginalised these abilities both as tools for learning and for
informing
their developing identities as teachers. On the basis of these
findings, broad
preliminary recommendations are made as to how the learning experiences
of bilingual
and multilingual pre-service primary teachers, and of their monolingual
peers,
may be improved at this university. The study’s findings point to
the need for
a larger-scale research study into this under-investigated aspect of
pre-service teacher education in Australia.
Keywords:
Multilingualism;
English as an Additional Language; teacher education; pedagogy;
knowledge base
for teaching; teacher roles
Introduction
Australia has
a
highly ethnically diverse population: 27% of its people are
overseas-born and
19% speak a non-English language at home (Australian Bureau of
Statistics
[ABS], 2013). Despite this reality, there has never been any systemic
bilingual
education (in which the curriculum is delivered two languages) in
Australia
(Gibbons, 1997). Nonetheless, the nation’s multiculturalism and
multilingualism
are recognised in government policy, and indeed, Australia has a
wide-ranging National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco,
1987). This recognition has not translated into the use of non-English
languages outside personal domains, nor into any large-scale public
events that
interrogate the limited usage domains of non-English languages, such as
2013’s groundbreaking
Festival of Languages (http://www.theguardian.com/language-festival)
in Britain, which highlighted this issue publically.
Australia has
no official language, but is effectively a monolingual English-speaking
country
in all public domains and is marked by a ‘persistent monolingual
mindset’ (Clyne,
2005: XI). Reflective of this context and of international trends in
English-speaking countries, such as Britain (Safford and Kelly, 2010),
Australia’s teaching force is overwhelmingly of English-speaking
background
(Allard, 2006). However, Australia’s increasing population
diversity is
mirrored in schools and in pre-service teacher cohorts. For example, in
2012,
15% of all domestic students in Australian universities regularly spoke
a non-English
language at home (Australian Government, DIICCSRTE, 2013).
In this
article, I report on
a small study I am conducting at an Australian university, to explore
meanings that
bilingual and multilingual pre-service primary teachers attach to their
linguistic ability in relation to their teacher preparation course, and
to
their emerging teacher identities. The study also seeks to identify
preliminary
implications of students’ meanings for improving pedagogical
practices at the
Australian Catholic University (ACU). I begin with an overview of the
pedagogies espoused in school level educational policy in Australia,
before
briefly reviewing the research base underlying them. I then contrast
this strong
school level policy to that of higher education, where an increasingly
diverse
cohort of students is enrolled.
Funds of
knowledge, policy and school education
Intellectual
quality is a strong focus of Australian educational policy. One means
of improving
intellectual quality is by linking students’ outside classroom
knowledge with
pedagogies encouraging the use of higher order thinking skills. Such
connection
is pivotal to ‘productive’ pedagogies (Lingard, et al.,
2001) in which ‘teachers
link the work of their students to personal, social and cultural
contexts
outside of the classroom’ (NSWDET, 2006: 7) as a means of
increasing academic
outcomes. In Australia, outside classroom knowledge is understood to
include ‘beliefs,
languages, practices and ways of knowing’ (Amosa and Ladwig,
2004: 1). In the United
States (US), Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzalez (1992: 133) identified a
variety
of knowledge of diverse students not routinely recognised in schools.
Using the
term ‘funds of knowledge’ to identify and value these
‘historically accumulated
and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for
household
or individual functioning and well-being’, they argued for
‘strategic’
incorporation of such funds of knowledge into educational settings as a
means
of increasing academic outcomes for diverse students. Among
students’ funds of
knowledge are their diverse language skills. The issue of classroom use
of students’
language skills is particularly apposite given the increasing diversity
of
classrooms in pluralist societies such as the UK and Australia.
Similarly to
the
UK, in Australia, the majority of English as an Additional Language
(EAL) students
receive the bulk of their education in mainstream English-medium
classes. Drawing
on these students’ linguistic ability has been recognised
internationally for
some time in policy as a means of realising the academic potential
inherent in
their ‘mainstreaming’. A companion document to the Australian Curriculum: English, the EAL/D
[English as an
Additional
Language or Dialect] Teacher Resource (Australian Curriculum and
Reporting
Authority [ACARA], 2011) states that teachers should actively employ
EAL/D
students’ linguistic knowledge to ‘build EAL/D
students’ English language
learning and their curriculum content knowledge. ‘It also
contends that doing
so ‘provid[es] opportunities for deep learning and intercultural
understanding
for the entire class’ (ACARA, 2011: 93-94). That is, diverse
linguistic
knowledge is framed as representing significant ‘pedagogical
potential’
(Wallace, 2005: 82) for all students.
Using
students’ linguistic
funds of knowledge to promote intellectual quality has a sound
theoretical base
in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. In the following
section, I
review some relevant findings from SLA research which illuminate why
use of diverse
students’ linguistic knowledge promotes attainment of higher
academic outcomes,
before moving on to consider the use of diverse pre-service primary
teachers’
linguistic funds of knowledge at university.
Research
supporting the use of linguistic funds of knowledge
The
Bilingual Interface
A widely
accepted body of SLA research has shown that maintaining and building a
child’s
first language (L1) is the best way to help that child to acquire an
additional
language (Cummins, 2000; McKay, 1999) and thus, to achieve curricular
access in
mainstream classes. Building students’ L1s activates the
potential in ‘the
bilingual interface’ or ‘the enriching and enabling
knowledge, skills and
experiences that ESL [English as a Second Language] learners bring to
their
learning at school, and to the coming together of these with their
experiences
at school’ (McKay, 1999: 123). SLA research has also established
the components
of diverse students’ ‘enriching and enabling’
language-based knowledge (Adesope,
et al., 2010). Multiple studies have
shown that bilinguals and multilinguals may have greater metalinguistic
awareness and metacognitive skills, stronger symbolic representation
and
abstract reasoning skills, enhanced problem-solving skills and
creative and
divergent thinking, and greater cognitive flexibility than their
monolingual
peers (Adesope, et al., 2010; Bialystok,
Craik and Luk, 2012). Surely, a formidable list of abilities to deploy
for
classroom learning.
Identity
Affirmation
The Identity
Affirmation hypothesis (Ladson-Billings, 1995) also supports the
educational use
of linguistic funds of knowledge. It posits that validation of the
cultural
identities and knowledge systems of diverse students in mainstream
settings is
a precondition for them to achieve academic success. Cummins and Early
(2011)
report the positive self-esteem and academic outcomes of affirmative
pedagogies
allowing diverse students to ‘showcase’ their linguistic
ability in classrooms.
Crucially, these pedagogies communicate to students that their L1
proficiency
is both important and valued. They also stimulate students’
‘awareness of the
relationships between their home language (L1) and the school language
(L2) [and]
increase their awareness of the specialised language of school
subjects’
(Cummins and Early, 2011: 3). In other words, they develop
students’ meta-linguistic
and meta-cognitive skills. ‘Showcasing’ L1 abilities
affirms identities and facilitates
students’ participation in experiences providing access into
curricular content
in the dominant language. For this to happen in classrooms,
universities must
produce highly skilled teachers ‘whose starting point is the
learners'
identities…who treat the students' lives as primary resources
for learning’
(Miller, 2009: 178). Given that pedagogical best practice links
students’
identities to new knowledge and skills (Lingard et al., 2001),
understanding
the meanings that students attach to their linguistic skills can
potentially
inform the improvement of pedagogical practices with linguistically
diverse
university students.
The next
section considers current
use of the linguistic funds of knowledge specifically of pre-service
primary
teachers in university courses internationally.
Linguistic
funds of knowledge
and teacher education programmes
As discussed
earlier, at
least at policy level, there is recognition that increasing diversity
in
classrooms requires implementation of pedagogies building on
students’ existing
knowledge. However, a concurrent increase in diversity in pre-service
teacher cohorts
in universities worldwide appears not to have resulted in similar
recognition
and pedagogical changes to facilitate deployment of students’
linguistic skills
in their learning (Safford and Kelly, 2010). Consequently, the
identities of
linguistically diverse pre-service primary teachers are generally not
being affirmed
as tools for learning experiences of intellectual quality, nor as
important
constituents of their evolving identity as teachers (Safford and Kelly,
2010). In
a study of UK diverse pre-service primary teachers, Safford and Kelly
found
that institutional practices ‘position linguistic and minority
ethnic
student-trainees in ways which present particular barriers to their
professional development and limit their opportunities to call upon
their funds
of knowledge’ (2010: 402). Arguably, institutional practices at
university
level which deny pre-service primary teachers access to their full
range of
learning resources, also deny monolingual pre-service primary teachers
access
to the significant pedagogical potential that their multilingual peers
represent.
The
study
This study
developed in the context sketched in previous sections. While
Australian
universities collect data about student linguistic diversity during
enrolment, it
is not routinely passed on to teaching staff. Consequently, the
linguistic
diversity of their students may be invisible to staff. The aim of this
study is
to follow a group of 16 bilingual and multilingual pre-service primary
teachers
enrolled in a teaching degree in a small Australian university,
throughout
their undergraduate study. (This article reports on the first 18 months
of the
study.) The participating students self-identified as bilingual or
multilingual
during enrolment and were subsequently invited by email to participate
in the
study.
Research Design
According to
Carter and
Doyle, ‘Narrative and life history’ are located ‘at
the centre of teaching
practice, the study of teachers and the teacher education
process’ (1996: 120).
Consequently, this study employed interpretive methodology as a means
of ‘gain[ing]
access to the conceptual worlds of the participants’
(Pacini-Ketchabaw and
Armstrong de Almeida, 2006: 318) in relation to their linguistic funds
of
knowledge. The study can be described as ‘an issue-driven case
study’ (Rodriguez
and Hye-sun, 2011: 497), where the ‘issue’ is the role of
students’ diverse linguistic
knowledge in their pre-service education and identity formation as
teachers.
Case study methodology provided a framework for collecting factual
information
and for eliciting narratives in order to facilitate creation of a
thorough description
of the pre-service primary teachers’ ‘conceptual
worlds’.
Data
gathering strategies
Thirty
students
participated in the first stage of data gathering, an online
questionnaire
seeking data on the nature and degree of students’ bilingualism
or
multilingualism, such as languages spoken, mode of learning,
self-assessment of
level of literacy and/or oracy and usage domains (See Appendix). All 30
students
were invited to participate in follow-up semi-structured interviews
and 16 accepted
the invitation. The languages spoken by interviewees were Lao, Punjabi,
Arabic,
Cantonese, Mandarin, Fujianese, Auslan (Australian Sign Language),
Korean, Persian,
Turkish, Japanese, Hindi, Polish, Greek, Vietnamese, Swahili,
Kinyarwanda and French.
The
semi-structured
interviews probed questionnaire responses and elicited students’
narratives or ‘topically
specific stories organised around characters, setting and plot in
answer to a
single interview question’ (Reissman, 2005: 1). While usually
associated with
social sciences, narrative-based research provides ‘legitimate
and valuable
research data’ in the area of teacher research because it
‘can offer ways to
explore the multiplicity and complexity of social identities of a
learner/teacher’ (Rodriguez and Hye-sun, 2011: 496). Key
interview items were:
All interviews
were recorded and transcribed.
Data
Analysis
Not all talk
in
interviews is narrative; shifts occur between factual, short answers
(non-narrative units) and narrative units and sequences in response to
certain
questions, or as initiated by the interviewee. Hence, data analysis
focussed on
both narrative and non-narrative units and hierarchies within these,
which indicated
student positionalities. In analysing transcript data, an eclectic
approach borrowing
from both the ‘family of approaches’ (Reismann, 2005: 1) of
narrative analysis (NA)
and also from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995) was
employed
to derive themes. Textual, or structural analysis, common to both NA
and CDA
sought to reveal within the themes the positionalities and discourses
the participants
appeared to invest in, where discourse is understood as ‘a
socially accepted
association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling,
believing,
valuing and of acting, that can be used to identify oneself as a member
of a
socially meaningful group or “social network”’ (Gee,
1990: 143). This analysis functioned
to illuminate power relationships implicit in students’
narratives, which indicated
indirectly their positionality in terms of meanings they attached to
their
linguistic funds of knowledge in the university context. Non-narrative
data was
coded and included in this analysis with the narrative data, to discern
similarities
and differences between the participants’ positionalities and
meanings.
From this
hybrid analysis, broad
preliminary themes meriting further examination emerged: the utility of
linguistic
funds of knowledge at university; student receptivity to teacher
education
perpetuating ‘English-only’ multiculturalism; and English
and ‘homogeneity’ of English-speaking
university students. These themes are considered next, before a
discussion of
their possible implications for teaching and learning at ACU. (All
names used
for interviewees throughout the following section are pseudonyms.)
Findings and
Discussion
The
utility of linguistic funds
of knowledge at university
Participants
were able to articulate some understandings of their linguistic funds
of
knowledge, however, they generally saw no role for their L1s in their
English-medium
university course. All reported that their linguistic ability had never
been
acknowledged or employed as a learning resource for themselves or
others at ACU. In other words, an
important aspect of their personal
identity was not being affirmed by staff (and by implication, their
student
peers) as an important fund of knowledge to inform their learning and
developing
identities as diverse teachers in a diverse nation. (It must be noted
here that
these claims are not verifiable as observation was not a feature of
this phase
of the study.)
Receptivity
to teacher education
perpetuating ‘English-only’ multiculturalism
What is
striking
in the data is perhaps not so much the lack of drawing on
students’ linguistic skills
by university staff, but rather the students’ apparent acceptance
of the marginalisation
of their linguistic knowledge at university, and its implicit corollary
that English
is the only valuable linguistic capital for university, and
accordingly, for informing
their evolving teacher identities. In this sense, students appear
‘receptive’ (Bourdieu,
1977) to teaching staff acting within the ‘language
marketplace’ (Bourdieu,
1977) as mediators of linguistic correctness, that is, of English
monolingualism at university. Describing their attitudes to the
English-only
medium of their course, students made comments such as ‘I
don’t think it’s an issue for me’ (Mariam,
Arabic-English
bilingual). Indeed, Lien, a Cantonese-English bilingual described her
bilingualism as ‘not really relevant’
to her university education. Students invariably situated their L1s in
private domains
of family and ethnic communities. One participant, Bao Yu, a
Fujianese-English
bilingual, represented this prevailing perspective when she said that
English was
‘for education’ and Fujianese was for
‘life’.
This general
perspective of participants was similar to that reported in a UK study
which
found that bilingual and multilingual pre-service primary teachers
experienced
difficulty in conceptualising and articulating links between their
linguistic
funds of knowledge and their developing skills as teachers (Safford and
Kelly,
2010). Safford and Kelly contended that these students ‘required
confidence to
articulate and utilise their language knowledge in monolingual
pedagogic
contexts’ (2010: 402). Given the descriptions of pedagogical
practices at their
university, it would appear almost impossible for participants in the
present
study to have ‘confidence’ to publically and explicitly
express their diverse
language knowledge in their pre-service teacher classes. As Aarushi, a
Hindi-speaking participant said of her university education thus far, ‘no one asked me what language I speak and
what I am fluent at … so … the environment [is] not
encouraging in terms of
language.’
The lack of
possibility for L1 use is related to another salient aspect in the
data; that
is, students’ apparent lack of generalisation beyond their own
‘micro’ experiences
at university. Their acceptance of the status quo indicated investment
in wider,
hegemonic, socially formed discourses and language ideologies.
Principal among
these is the ‘naturalised’ discourse (Fairclough, 1995) of
the obviousness of
English-only as the medium of all academic education, and as the sole
valuable
linguistic constituent of students’ emerging teacher identities.
Students’
narratives conveyed their symbolic domination by powerful social
systems, and
their integration into the systems by which they are dominated
(Blackledge,
2002). Participants appeared to tacitly consent to their subordination
to the
practices of an educational system perpetuating the English
monolingualism of
the socially powerful (including university staff) in multicultural
Australia.
They generally positioned themselves as without agency in regard to
this issue.
One participant commented, ‘I have to go
with the system [at the university]. The system will not go according
to me’.
A number of
participants spoke,
however, of being asked by their teachers to comment during classes on
their
cultures’ practices in relation to educational issues such as
parent/child
reading practices and school/home relations. (Being asked to act as a
spokesperson for one’s minority culture within a majority culture
context is,
of course, not unproblematic.) Nonetheless, the question of the role of
languages
other than English in education remained invisible in these contexts.
Hence,
while in some circumstances, aspects of cultural knowledge related to
education
were acknowledged and ‘affirmed’ by university teachers,
students’ linguistic
knowledge remained marginalised. A clear correspondence emerges here
between
students’ conceptualisations of their L1s as cultural artefacts
and community
resources, and university teachers’ framing of students’
diversity in the
teaching space. The findings of this small study thus suggest that
ACU’s
institutional practices are playing a role in perpetuating a
conceptualisation
of multiculturalism that concentrates on cultural artefacts and views
the
languages of non-majority cultures as extraneous to educational
endeavour, and
thus, to the accrual of valuable social and cultural capital through
education.
This finding is consistent with the findings of research carried out in
relation to multilingual Adult English as an Additional Language
teachers in
Australia (Ellis, 2004).
The
homogeneity of English-speaking
university students
Consistent
with
their apparent acceptance of the invisibility of their linguistic
abilities,
the participants appeared also to invest in a discourse centred on the
homogeneity of monolingual and multilingual English-speaking university
students. As proficient English-speakers, and also consistent with the
finding that
they did not generalise beyond their own
‘micro’ situations, most participants did
not view themselves as marginalised within the university space.
Indeed, a
number indicated a belief that in Australian universities monolingual
and
multilingual students are not distinct groups. The following comment
from Mila,
a Polish-English bilingual, exemplifies this orientation: ‘We’re
[monolinguals and multilinguals] the same … we all grew up in
Australia, learn the same, have the same education system.’
Any recognition
that being bilingual or multilingual made them somehow different to
their
monolingual pre-service teacher peers was expressed in terms of access
to experiences
and perspectives afforded them by the cultural affiliation their
languages
encoded, rather than in terms of cognitive differences afforded by
their
multilingualism.
There is
obvious concordance
here with the way in which multiculturalism was reportedly construed by
university
teachers in classes. Participants expressed reluctance to draw
attention to
their linguistic abilities in any sphere of their university life,
which is
perhaps not surprising given the reported prevailing institutional
practices, which
suggest a deficit perspective toward non-English languages and their
speakers. Participants
also tended to play down their linguistic skills in general, employing
modifying
language in their narratives, for example, ‘speaking
another language doesn’t make me necessarily smarter in another
field’ (Kyung-Soon),
and being bilingual is ‘good, but not
better’ than being monolingual (Bao Yu).
Drawing the
themes together
The preceding
preliminary
themes indicate that the meanings that students attach to their
linguistic
funds of knowledge reflect the institutional practices they report at
this
university, and those of the wider social discourses of which the
university is
a part. That is, that non-English linguistic knowledge is of no value
in higher
education and that English is the only natural medium for constructing
academic
knowledge in multilingual Australia. In effect, being multilingual has
no role
to play in informing students’ pre-service teacher identities.
This suggests
that the development of their identities as Australian teachers, that
is, as
English-speaking teachers in an English-medium education system, may to
some
degree, rely on suppression of their multilingual identities. The
university’s
reported pedagogical practices deny students opportunities to use their
full ‘repertoire
of resources’ and to ‘test [these] as they negotiate and
build their
professional identities in social and institutional contexts’
(Miller, 2009:
175). The discourses in which students invest would appear to be
perpetuated by
the university’s practices. The probable corollary of this
negation of
non-English abilities is that the non-English linguistic funds of
knowledge of
their own future diverse school students are also not important
learning assets,
despite the research and policy base indicating the contrary.
At the same
time, students’
lack of personal recognition, and the university’s lack of
institutional recognition
of these resources, also denies the great pedagogical potential that
these
resources represent to their English monolingual student peers who will
inevitably
teach in multilingual classrooms. The data suggest that institutional
practices
and students’ own meanings in interaction are resulting in less
than optimal
educational opportunities for these students. The next section
considers some
preliminary implications of this analysis for improving teaching and
learning at
ACU and possibly other universities, and thus for producing better
teachers for
Australia’s multilingual classrooms.
Towards
improved
pedagogy
There are a
number of ways in which ACU may move toward maximising opportunities
for multilingual
students to draw on their linguistic funds of knowledge as learning and
identity formation tools. They are considered below.
Opportunities
to disrupt the habitus
of students and staff
Habitus is
strategic practice produced by socialisation in a particular
sociocultural
environment (Bourdieu, 1977) which is both reflected in, and
perpetuated by,
the circulation of powerful discourses. It is largely unconscious and
because
of this, durable (Bourdieu, 1977). However, Bourdieu (2002: 29)
contends that
while durable, habitus as ‘a product of history, that is, of
social experience
and education … may be changed by history, that is, by new
experiences,
education or training’. Consequently, while durable due to its
origins in
historical and political structures, teachers’ habitus is also
dynamic. This
dynamism presents opportunities for disruption and change. The
university needs
to create opportunities for staff and students (multilingual and
monolingual) to
interrogate the assumptions underlying the non-English deficit
discourse of
institutional practices in which implicit English monolingual norms are
rarely
questioned in regard to how they may affect the educational
participation and
outcomes of linguistically diverse students, their identity formation
(and
affirmation), and their academic achievement.
The roots of
these
practices in wider hegemonic social processes need to be made visible
and
interrogated, given that they remain largely unexamined by many staff
and
students (as does staff’s role as linguistic gate keepers).
Ideally, such
processes would provide opportunities for diverse students to
extrapolate their
own ‘micro’ experiences and narratives explicitly to wider
‘macro’ social processes
and to share their narratives with staff and their monolingual student
peers. Combined
with opportunities for reflection on practice, their narratives could
be
powerful catalysts for change, given that students’ personal
narratives ‘can
mean something else (and more) when their voices are considered in
concert and
positioned as part of a larger discourse within teacher
education’ (Rodriguez and
Hye-sun, 2011: 498). In so doing, students may be able to step beyond
their
passive receptivity to the invisibility of their linguistic ability at
university. Simultaneously, changed pedagogical practices could begin
to disrupt
ACU’s role as an agent of perpetuation of English-only
multiculturalism in
Australia. Within this process, administrative steps could be taken to
position
student multilingualism more visibly, such as through passing on data
about
student ‘linguistic funds of knowledge’ to staff as a
matter of course.
Protocols
for interrogating
course content
Another
long-term means of opening up the pedagogical potential of multilingual
pre-service
primary teachers would be through the development of protocols to
interrogate
the positionalities, privileging and silences in relation to linguistic
diversity within university subjects, and textbooks assigned for these
subjects. This process may consider, for example, issues such as how
orientations
within subject content to the development of sensitivity to the
‘otherness’ of multilingual
students might be replaced by academic understanding of the cognitive
advantages of multilingualism.
SLA
research outcomes as core
content
A third
possible
way forward would be through the inclusion of relevant SLA research
findings as
core content in all pre-service teacher programmes, and the development
of
appropriate pedagogical models for doing this. At present at ACU, SLA
outcomes
are included only in elective undergraduate subjects. This, in itself,
indicates the marginalised status of non-English languages, and by
implication,
their speakers, in this university. Explicit teaching of SLA outcomes
could
function on a number of levels: to raise the status of non-English
languages,
and by implication, their speakers; to make the implicit knowledge of
bilinguals and multilinguals more explicit; and to provide received,
expert knowledge
about multilingualism not available to monolinguals through any means
besides
education.
Limitations
of the study
There are
numerous
limitations to this study, including the self-selected nature of
participants
and their small number. In addition, students’ comments about
staff’s practices
were not verified through observation. Nonetheless, the study provides
a
description of a contemporary Australian university context and of how
students’
meanings, in intersection with reported institutional practices, act to
limit these
students’ learning potential, and arguably, that of their
monolingual peers. This
description, and any validity of a generalisable nature that it might
hold,
potentially represent a valuable contribution to practice in other
contexts,
and merit further investigation.
Conclusion
This article
has reported
on a small study amongst bilingual and multilingual pre-service primary
teachers in an Australian university. It found that students did not
place
value on their diverse linguistic funds of knowledge in relation to the
accrual
of academic knowledge at university. Students appeared to conform to
reported institutional
practices in the university, which rendered these funds of knowledge
invisible.
They lacked confidence and opportunities to draw on their linguistic
skills for
university learning, or to inform their emerging teacher identities.
The article
also considered implications of the study’s results for
pedagogical practices in
ACU, and made recommendations for steps that could be taken to improve
these
including, structured opportunities to disrupt the habitus of staff and
students, development of protocols for interrogating course content and
teaching SLA research outcomes as core content of undergraduate
programmes.
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Appendix
Initial
questionnaire
1.
What was/were
the first language/s
you used as a child?
2.
How many
languages other than
English do you know? Please list them
here.
3.
How, where and
when did you learn
that/ those language/s?
4.
Who do you use
that/ those
language/s with?
5.
In what
situations do you use
that/those languages (e.g. social,
religious ceremonies, daily family communication, study)
6.
Have you had
any formal, ongoing
instruction in that/those languages since commencing primary school? If
yes,
please indicate in which language/s and describe the type of
instruction, place
of instruction and frequency of instruction.
Name of
Language _________________________
Details
_______________________________________________________________
7.
Please name
each of the languages
you know below and circle the letter/s that best describes
your current use.
Name of
Language _________________________ a) I
understand when spoken to in this
language, but cannot speak it well b) I
can speak it c) I can write it d) I can
read it e) Other-please describe here
_____________________________________________
8.
For each
language choose the letter
that best describes your assessment
of your overall ability level. Name
of Language _________________________ a)
basic b)
moderate
c)strong d)
fluent e) Other-please
describe here
_________________________________________
9.
What do you
consider your first, or
strongest, language now? Why?
10.
Do you have
any comment you’d like to add about the
languages you know?
Thank
you very
much for time and your valuable co-operation with this project.