Recently, the incorporation of students' home languages into monolingual classrooms has been reinvigorated by a scholarly focus on extended linguistic repertoire. In bilingual programs, ideas of language separation have traditionally influenced teaching and learning as a way to protect the minority language, but there is a growing call to engage…

The early years before compulsory schooling are crucial for children's identities, including their cultural identities. This article reports on a community-collaborative educational program that aimed to promote children's positive Samoan identities in a culturally safe environment. Data were collected through ethnographic methods, including…

This paper examines the ways in which authentic conversation provides a sociocultural resource for developing the cultural competence of learners of Chinese as a heritage language in Australia. It draws upon language socialization as a theoretical framework to study the interconnected processes of linguistic and cultural learning in interactional…

The heterogeneous backgrounds, languages and proficiencies students bring to the classroom have always been a key challenge facing schools that wish to implement heritage language programmes. In this article I describe the evolution of one high school's approach to heritage language education and some of the roadblocks they encountered in…

Describes the Home Language Support Project, which is an attempt to help mainstream teachers include children's home languages in educational programs. Questions that arose during the implementation of the program are discussed, including language delivery patterns in home language support programs and the issue of code switching. (19 references)…

Activities at Edith Cowan University (Australia) in support of the maintenance of Aboriginal languages and Aboriginal English are discussed. Discussion begins with an examination of the concept of language maintenance and the reasons it merits the attention of linguists, language planners, and language teachers. Australian policy concerning…

For more than 50 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been conducting comparative studies of educational achievement in a number of curriculum areas, including mathematics and science. TIMSS 2011 represents the fifth cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS),…

This review of Australia's National Aboriginal Languages Program, undertaken in September-November 1989, involved consultation with individuals in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organizations and communities in several areas. It was found that 56% of 1988-89 funding went to Aboriginal communities and regional language centers, 20% to state schools,…

The Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD) is an Aboriginal-controlled language resource center and adult education center serving the Aboriginal communities of central Australia. Its activities include education programs, which range from literacy and numeracy to vocational and tertiary-level courses; an Aboriginal language and culture center…

In 1999 Ministers responsible for school education agreed to the new set of "National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century," with the aim of providing high quality schooling in Australia which would secure for students the necessary knowledge, understanding, skills and values for a productive and rewarding life. As a…