The reawakening of the Indigenous Gamilaraay language in northern inland New South Wales, Australia involves righting two centuries of prohibition and mistreatment after invasion by English-speaking settlers. Gamilaraay is no longer used as an everyday language in the community, although it has strong emblematic value for the Gamilaraay community.…

Australia is a 'hotspot' of Indigenous language endangerment, but has a growing number of language revival projects. We describe one such project which is using a community development approach for the revival of the Gamilaraay language in north-eastern New South Wales. As a result of colonisation there are now no fluent speakers of Gamilaraay and…

Theories of language policy increasingly emphasise focusing on the specific contexts in which language management occurs. In government settings, policy seeks to shape how individuals interact with officials. Australian asylum procedure is an area where policy aims at tight control. I examine how communication is managed in this setting, in which…

In a companion article, we considered legal issues in language and culture in private schooling in two U.S. contexts: "Silva v. St. Anne Catholic School" and "Doe v. Kamehameha Schools". In this article, we consider the facts and findings of these two cases under the human rights and antidiscrimination legal frameworks of…

The current educational context in many English speaking countries is one where literacy is understood to be essentially monolingual in orientation; that is, an understanding of literacy around a single common language, with the emphasis on identifying universal, normative "standards" and "benchmarks", such as the…

This book examines the impact of English in countries in which it is taken for granted--Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. It explores how the impact of English affects the development of national language policies, the maintenance of minority languages, the ability to provide services in other languages, the efforts…

A discussion of language policy formation and planning in Australia covers the following: the development of the national policy on languages, and the Australian Language and Literacy Policy and its four goals related to English language and literacy, languages other than English, aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, and…

This chapter uses the insights of Dorothy Smith and Anna Yeatman, both feminist scholars, to explore the nature of policy formation through two examples from Australia. Smith and Yeatman argue that all description is both biased and interested. The article documents how the values of pluralism and equity were not served well by Australian policy…

The eight issues of the newsletter of the National Association for Bilingual Education contain articles on these topics in relation to bilingual education: federal policy and policy formation; teacher qualifications; the English-only movement; parent involvement; reading instruction; the effect of foreign-language schools on children's…

Presents a brief overview of the sociological forces shaping the discourse of disability; examines the part that public libraries have played, or failed to play, in addressing issues of exclusion as they relate to people with disabilities. Focuses on Australia's deaf community and its particular informational needs. The low impact of the…

This collection of three issues focuses on competencies for teachers of learners who are deaf-blind, living with deaf-blindness, and resources in Australia for parents and families of students who are deaf-blind. Articles include: (1) "Research-to-Practice Focus: Competencies for Teachers of Learners Who Are Deafblind" (Marianne Riggio),…