... my wife (Nancy Devlin), colleagues at Tsinghua University (especially Associate Professor Yan... more ... my wife (Nancy Devlin), colleagues at Tsinghua University (especially Associate Professor Yang Fang and Lu Yan Bin), the editor at Tsinghua University Press (Ning You Quan) and students in my Advanced Academic Writing Class; in particular, Liu Qirong (Emily), who allowed ...
The task of this chapter to consider how academic achievement in bilingual programs has been meas... more The task of this chapter to consider how academic achievement in bilingual programs has been measured in the Northern Territory (NT). Particular attention is paid to relevant research projects, critical reviews of the relevant literature, external test results and Department of Education accreditation reports. Although some evidence of program effectiveness is available, it is fairly sparse, and not all of it warrants a high strength rating. Even so, it is not justifiable to claim, as some in positions of authority have done in recent years, that such evidence does not exist. There are datasets available to justify the claim that bilingual education programs can achieve better results and attract higher attendance than English-only approaches in similarly remote NT community schools.
By way of introducing Part 1, ‘Starting Out’, this chapter sketches the evolution of bilingual ed... more By way of introducing Part 1, ‘Starting Out’, this chapter sketches the evolution of bilingual education policy in the Northern Territory from 1950 to 1975.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1995
Faced with the choice, due to space limitations, of including either our editors' preface äs ... more Faced with the choice, due to space limitations, of including either our editors' preface äs originally prepared or one more of the shorter articles, we chose the latter; hence this very brief preface. When we began work on this issue, rather than approach the task in terms of a specific ränge of topics that we feit to be representative of current sociolinguistic work in Australian Aboriginal languages, we simply canvassed a wide number of colleagues and invited them to write about their own current interests. The resulting papers seem to fall roughly into three areas. The first four papers are about bilingual education, and they reveal an increasing Aboriginal control over the ways their languages are used in schools. The middle two papers (by Amery and by Dalton et al.) concern language survival/revival and reveal a growing commitment among some Aboriginal people, including some in southern cities, to deliberately intervene in the histories of their own languages. The last four papers (by Cooke, Rydwen, Shnukal, and Nicholls) are about issues of justice, resistance, and aspects of a continued dismantling of our colonial past. Readers will notice that the style of some of the papers varies away from the formal academic tradition. That is deliberate on the part of the writers (for example, Rhydwen) and is endorsed by us äs having a functional purpose. It is now a little over a decade since the last issue of IJSL devoted to Australian Aboriginal languages (McKay 1982). In that time there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of the views of Aboriginal people about their own languages (and how this should appropriately influence the allocation of funding in support of language projects) and a gradual increase in the number of Aborigines writing about their own languages. In relation to this last development, apart from the ongoing literature production in bilingual schools, we note the importance of institutions such äs the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice
In dozens of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, thousands of books in Indigenous A... more In dozens of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, thousands of books in Indigenous Australian languages were produced for use in classrooms, with illustrations by local artists, usually published on site and with a small local distribution. The production of these resources involved a blending of Indigenous knowledges with Western technologies bringing previously oral-only stories into a written mode, enabling a different means of transmission and a different degree of permanence, as well as a radical redefinition of text and representation. The digitisation of this body of literature in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages extends these shifts even further, creating new audiences, contexts and opportunities for the transmission of Indigenous knowledges contained in these books. This chapter addresses some of the implications of the changes associated with the shift from oral to paper to digital modes.
Since the 1970s school attendance and student performance data have been used to determine the st... more Since the 1970s school attendance and student performance data have been used to determine the status and future of bilingual education programs in remote NT schools. They have primarily been evaluated for educational planning purposes, which is both acceptable and necessary. Regrettably, evidence has also been selectively compiled by Government officials at different times, as in 2008, to serve a particular political purpose. Bilingual education has always been contested since its inception in the NT. It is argued in this chapter that had this educational approach been better understood, there would have been greater official willingness to maintain support, and to continue refining it as a model of schooling appropriate for students in remote areas. Instead, in 2008 and 2009, some decision makers publicly debunked bilingual-biliteracy education, which they poorly understood, thereby diverting schools and communities, and distracting their attention away from the work that needed to be done.
An impetus to preserve thousands of books produced in Aboriginal languages during the years of bi... more An impetus to preserve thousands of books produced in Aboriginal languages during the years of bilingual education in the Northern Territory has led to the development of the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages (www.cdu.edu.au/laal). The challenge has been to squeeze a complex range of materials into specific categories which meet the standards of a Western-style archive while also respecting the Indigenous creators and knowledges represented therein. This paper considers some of the technical, social and political issues that are thereby raised in bringing the archive to life, and the compromises that have been required.
... my wife (Nancy Devlin), colleagues at Tsinghua University (especially Associate Professor Yan... more ... my wife (Nancy Devlin), colleagues at Tsinghua University (especially Associate Professor Yang Fang and Lu Yan Bin), the editor at Tsinghua University Press (Ning You Quan) and students in my Advanced Academic Writing Class; in particular, Liu Qirong (Emily), who allowed ...
The task of this chapter to consider how academic achievement in bilingual programs has been meas... more The task of this chapter to consider how academic achievement in bilingual programs has been measured in the Northern Territory (NT). Particular attention is paid to relevant research projects, critical reviews of the relevant literature, external test results and Department of Education accreditation reports. Although some evidence of program effectiveness is available, it is fairly sparse, and not all of it warrants a high strength rating. Even so, it is not justifiable to claim, as some in positions of authority have done in recent years, that such evidence does not exist. There are datasets available to justify the claim that bilingual education programs can achieve better results and attract higher attendance than English-only approaches in similarly remote NT community schools.
By way of introducing Part 1, ‘Starting Out’, this chapter sketches the evolution of bilingual ed... more By way of introducing Part 1, ‘Starting Out’, this chapter sketches the evolution of bilingual education policy in the Northern Territory from 1950 to 1975.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1995
Faced with the choice, due to space limitations, of including either our editors' preface äs ... more Faced with the choice, due to space limitations, of including either our editors' preface äs originally prepared or one more of the shorter articles, we chose the latter; hence this very brief preface. When we began work on this issue, rather than approach the task in terms of a specific ränge of topics that we feit to be representative of current sociolinguistic work in Australian Aboriginal languages, we simply canvassed a wide number of colleagues and invited them to write about their own current interests. The resulting papers seem to fall roughly into three areas. The first four papers are about bilingual education, and they reveal an increasing Aboriginal control over the ways their languages are used in schools. The middle two papers (by Amery and by Dalton et al.) concern language survival/revival and reveal a growing commitment among some Aboriginal people, including some in southern cities, to deliberately intervene in the histories of their own languages. The last four papers (by Cooke, Rydwen, Shnukal, and Nicholls) are about issues of justice, resistance, and aspects of a continued dismantling of our colonial past. Readers will notice that the style of some of the papers varies away from the formal academic tradition. That is deliberate on the part of the writers (for example, Rhydwen) and is endorsed by us äs having a functional purpose. It is now a little over a decade since the last issue of IJSL devoted to Australian Aboriginal languages (McKay 1982). In that time there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of the views of Aboriginal people about their own languages (and how this should appropriately influence the allocation of funding in support of language projects) and a gradual increase in the number of Aborigines writing about their own languages. In relation to this last development, apart from the ongoing literature production in bilingual schools, we note the importance of institutions such äs the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice
In dozens of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, thousands of books in Indigenous A... more In dozens of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, thousands of books in Indigenous Australian languages were produced for use in classrooms, with illustrations by local artists, usually published on site and with a small local distribution. The production of these resources involved a blending of Indigenous knowledges with Western technologies bringing previously oral-only stories into a written mode, enabling a different means of transmission and a different degree of permanence, as well as a radical redefinition of text and representation. The digitisation of this body of literature in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages extends these shifts even further, creating new audiences, contexts and opportunities for the transmission of Indigenous knowledges contained in these books. This chapter addresses some of the implications of the changes associated with the shift from oral to paper to digital modes.
Since the 1970s school attendance and student performance data have been used to determine the st... more Since the 1970s school attendance and student performance data have been used to determine the status and future of bilingual education programs in remote NT schools. They have primarily been evaluated for educational planning purposes, which is both acceptable and necessary. Regrettably, evidence has also been selectively compiled by Government officials at different times, as in 2008, to serve a particular political purpose. Bilingual education has always been contested since its inception in the NT. It is argued in this chapter that had this educational approach been better understood, there would have been greater official willingness to maintain support, and to continue refining it as a model of schooling appropriate for students in remote areas. Instead, in 2008 and 2009, some decision makers publicly debunked bilingual-biliteracy education, which they poorly understood, thereby diverting schools and communities, and distracting their attention away from the work that needed to be done.
An impetus to preserve thousands of books produced in Aboriginal languages during the years of bi... more An impetus to preserve thousands of books produced in Aboriginal languages during the years of bilingual education in the Northern Territory has led to the development of the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages (www.cdu.edu.au/laal). The challenge has been to squeeze a complex range of materials into specific categories which meet the standards of a Western-style archive while also respecting the Indigenous creators and knowledges represented therein. This paper considers some of the technical, social and political issues that are thereby raised in bringing the archive to life, and the compromises that have been required.
Uploads