International students undergo both language and academic culture shocks in their study in destination countries such as the UK, the US and Australia. However, most of the research on international students tends to adopt a deficit discourse when portraying this group of students. This research is a response to the call of researchers in the field…

In this paper we compare the early years mathematics curricula of Germany, South Africa, and Australia in relation to the place value concept. Place value is an important topic as it underpins much of the number work completed by learners in the early years of schooling. We found that there were differences between the three curricula that could…

To date, studies that investigate lexical overlap in signed languages have mainly considered the relationships between deaf community signed languages. The alternate sign languages of Indigenous Australia provide an opportunity to take another perspective -- they are perhaps amongst the oldest known sign languages in the world, their main users…

Migrant families often invite grandparents to move to Australia when babies are born. In order to provide support to their families, many of these grandparents have to retire from their own professional careers and migrate to Australia to start new lives. Some speak English as an additional language, with or without formal education, prior to…

Imagine a scenario with a pilot and a flight attendant. How do you picture them? Now read the following anecdote: Sandra, an airline pilot with years of experience, was preparing for her flight while chatting with Mike, a flight attendant who had just joined the crew. Some of the passengers were surprised to see Sandra confidently taking control…

The benefits of engaging students in mathematics classroom dialogue have been highlighted (and advocated) in a large body of research studies, most of which were conducted in Western cultural contexts. Whether such research advocacy can be extended legitimately to encompass practice in classrooms situated in other cultural contexts, such as East…

The instrumental motivations of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) have been examined in detail, but there is a lack of studies exploring how they compare to those of learners of other languages (LOTEs). To address this gap, this study draws on a questionnaire (N = 312) and on semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and focuses on…

This article contributes to a growing debate within the field of early childhood education about the concept of 'belonging'. It continues from earlier discussions that commented on the adoption of Belonging as a key term in the development of a national curriculum for the early years in Australia in 2009, as well as increasingly common references…

This article examines the institutional and market treatment of the profession of interpreting in the English-monolingual context of Australia. Based on qualitative interview methods with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, the study aims to explore the impact of the linguistic hierarchies in favour of English on the financial and…

This paper forwards the notion that languages are an important resource for sustainable development for modern societies. Informed by theories from both sociolinguistics and language economics on the value of language skills, it is suggested that language(s) have different kinds of value in multilingual societies. Sociolinguists often emphasize…

Considerations for conducting ethical research with human participants in languages other than English are addressed to some extent in regulatory and guiding statements for researchers, but in ways that are minimal or vague. In this article, I examine guiding documents for research ethics from four countries: the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA,…

Increasing globalisation has spurred a flow of migrants worldwide. These movements include exchanges of migrants' linguistic repertoires across regions, transforming the ways in which they define themselves in a multilingual society. Unlike identity categories such as ethnic identity, the contested concept of citizenship identity has remained…

The following interview was conducted with Catherine Elder in spring of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. Cathie has had a varied career in language testing, including work at universities in Australia and New Zealand and at the Language Testing Resource Center in Melbourne. In this interview, Cathie shares some highlights of her somewhat…

This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and…

This paper presents data from an Australian high school classroom, investigating how students and their teacher negotiate readings of literature in order to arrive at meanings that are valued by subject English, as well as understood by the students. Subject English acts a vital agent for the transmission of both literacy and literary knowledge in…