Figure 1 - uploaded by Denise Angelo
Content may be subject to copyright.
Pattern of Linguistic Influences on Colonially Induced Contact Languages Arising in Queensland. Source: adapted from Angelo (2004)
Source publication
The paper discusses the contexts of language backgrounds, language learning, policy and assessment relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) students who are learning Standard Australian English (SAE) as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) in the state of Queensland. Complexities surrounding this cohort’s language situati...
Citations
... It is these ideological positionings, ones entrenched in policy without being explicitly stated, that act to maintain colonial structures and perpetuate inequalities. For First Nations languages and languages learners these inequalities in the Australian schooling system have been well articulated in relation to the implementation of NAPLAN (Angelo, 2011;Macqueen et al., 2018;Wigglesworth et al., 2011), and the structure of current funding models which often fail to accurately identify First Nations language learners (ACTA, 2022;Angelo, 2013;Dixon & Angelo, 2014;Lingard et al., 2012). Furthermore, it has been widely argued that such policies and practices reinforce the invisibility, and peripheral positioning of many First Nations language learners (see Angelo & Hudson, 2020;Poetsch, 2020;Sellwood & Angelo, 2013;Steele & Wigglesworth, 2023). ...
... Several studies discuss the assessment challenges for EAL/D students regarding external data like NAPLAN, and internal data like ESL band-scales and other senior secondary writing tasks, which are guided by senior certificate policies (Angelo, 2013;Baak et al., 2021;Creagh, 2014;Dixon & Angelo, 2014). Angelo (2013), Dixon and Angelo (2014), and Creagh (2014) raised the highly problematic nature of NAPLAN. ...
... Several studies discuss the assessment challenges for EAL/D students regarding external data like NAPLAN, and internal data like ESL band-scales and other senior secondary writing tasks, which are guided by senior certificate policies (Angelo, 2013;Baak et al., 2021;Creagh, 2014;Dixon & Angelo, 2014). Angelo (2013), Dixon and Angelo (2014), and Creagh (2014) raised the highly problematic nature of NAPLAN. Creagh (2014) points out for ESL students, the manner in which NAPLAN data is disaggregated based on LBOTE (Language Background Other Than English) is the only indicator of language and it does not take into account proficiency in SAE or any second language factors which may impact upon student performance in writing. ...
The overall purpose of this study was to explore the identified language challenges and supports for writing in Standard Australian English for secondary English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) students. An initial review of the academic literature revealed that this research topic has not been extensively researched within the Australian context. For this reason, this research project involved a systematic scoping study of the academic literature, based on the framework of Arksey and O’Malley (2005). This scoping study mapped the current research, and through a content analysis, synthesised the findings. In total, Level 1 searching of five digital data bases revealed 77 potential studies based on key word searches of titles and abstracts, published from 2010-2022. Further reading and searching refined these to 35 articles that addressed the research question. These articles revealed a range of themes that either challenged or supported the writing process for Australian EAL/D secondary students. These related to aspects at the policy, contextual and classroom level that shaped teachers’ knowledge practice, beliefs and skills in relation to teaching and learning, planning and assessing writing in a range of secondary areas. Gaps in the literature and a way forward, as well as implications for the future are discussed.
... It often surprises those outside the L2 school sector that Identification features as an L2 assessment issue: it is assumed that learners self-identify through enrolment. In school EAL/D assessment, however, identification is seen as a high stakes and unsettled issue (Abedi, 2008;Angelo, 2013;Hudson & Angelo, 2014Lopez et al., 2016;Sinclair & Lau, 2018), since hidden language learners miss out on crucial EAL/D language support (e.g. Angelo, 2012;Gawne et al., 2017). ...
... missed if EAL/D is conceived in terms of funding program eligibility rather than a learning need. On-enrolment identification processes have also often been developed with New Arrival migrant/refugee students in mind, and so include country of birth, visa categories 22 and time of arrival, which are not relevant to all EAL/D learners and distract from more pertinent language-based criteria, such as understanding that students speak a different language at home (Angelo, 2013;Dixon & Angelo, 2014). ...
Equity and fairness in schooling is embedded in and represented by assessment practices which are inclusive of diverse cohorts. For students who are speakers of English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D), fair and equitable EAL/D assessment frameworks must meet a number of key purposes: identification of the full cohort of EAL/D learners, classification of their English language level, acknowledgement and inclusion of students’ bilingual/multilingual capabilities, and enhancement of specialist and mainstream teachers’ pedagogical knowledge of and responses to students’ language needs and language learning contexts. They must also have the capacity to communicate to stakeholders for accountability purposes. Importantly, these assessment tools must be grounded in principles, theory, teacher experience and be evidence informed. This paper will present an overview of the Bandscales State Schools (Queensland (Qld)) for EAL/D learners, the genesis and parentage of the framework, its complementary teacher guidance material and its utilization in research. We will argue that the core goals of equity and fairness are supported by the underlying constructs and design of the Queensland Bandscales, and that it provides a model framework for ‘responsible’ EAL/D assessment that might underlie any possible future national reporting of EAL/D learner needs-based resourcing.
... It should be noted that "English language invisibility" is also a feature of other largescale standardised tests and their reports on older Australian children, such as the National Assessment Program -Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and the Australian PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) (Angelo, 2013;Creagh, 2013;Macqueen et al., 2019). ...
This paper examines how English language learners (ELLs) remain shadowy figures in the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), a national early childhood development assessment, which since 2009 has been completed triennially by classroom teachers in all Australian jurisdictions for every child in their first year of schooling. It shows how ELLs elude clear identification and appropriate English as a Second/Additional language (L2) assessment because of the fundamentally monolingual conceptualisation of this tool. The AEDC provides the only set of education data at the national level for this young age group and has consequently become a “go to” measure for policy initiatives. However, young children in contemporary Australia are linguistically diverse and so semi-recognition of ELLs in an English only assessment tool is very concerning. Neither the definition of ELLs nor the wording of key assessment items gives classroom teachers sufficient guidance on how to respond for ELLs. The resulting AEDC data and associated reports easily drift towards deficit misinterpretations as natural L2 proficiency levels are muddled with global childhood development in communication and cognition. The paper makes recommendations for improving the quality and accuracy of AEDC data outputs for ELLs and for using the data for policy purposes.
... cultural responsiveness" (vi). Added to this is the annual national standardized NAPLAN reporting of Indigenous underachievement (Angelo, 2013;Dixon & Angelo, 2014) against expected standards. These standards align with the national curriculum, and change has been slow (Hogarth, 2016). ...
Australia does not have an exemplary track record regarding Indigenous Australians’ human rights and treatment. Moving forward past the colonial mechanisms since 1788 has proven difficult. Decolonizing practices in education include embedding Indigenous ways of learning. It is essential to include decolonizing practices in teacher education to allow preservice teachers, most of whom are non-Indigenous, to learn about the barriers that persist for Indigenous students and how to eliminate them. Although Indigenous people have been resilient in the face of adversity for so long, their resilience may be wearing thin, with circumstances and systems continuing to result in environments of social exclusion and inequity. This chapter examines a strength-based approach to educational practice and teacher education by exploring Indigenous resilience, standpoint theory, and cultural strength as tools to understand educational issues differently and consider how Indigenous voices and Indigenous decision-making might change systems. The movement of decolonization through initial teacher education includes using cultural responsiveness and a transformative learning style to create a better-informed workforce of teachers capable of ensuring a promising future for all Australians.
... Anecdotal reports suggest that some organisations have at times used word lists created for other populations, reportedly with a sense of frustration. There is therefore an urgent need for a locallyverified language assessment tool that fairly reflects the physical, language and sociocognitive environments of the children (Angelo, 2013;Cole & Zieky, 2001, p. 40;Khamchuang et al., 2022). This paper reports on the development of a local, empirically-based early childhood vocabulary evaluation tool, a multilingual MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) (Fenson et al., 2007;Fenson et al., 2000) created for four of the languages spoken by young children in Central Australia. ...
Assessment of the language development of Aboriginal children in Central Australia is a major challenge, because little is known about the children’s language repertoires and paths of development. The Central Australian language context presents a specific challenge for describing what young children are learning and for developing an appropriate vocabulary assessment tool. National Indigenous policies now have a focus on young children’s development, and existing monolingual English language assessment tools are bound to be inaccurate and unfair, either under-reporting knowledge that is present, or under-reporting difficulties children may have. In response, a multilingual ‘spoken’ MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) app, the Little Kids' Word List, has been developed for four of the languages spoken by young children in Central Australia: Eastern & Central Arrernte, Western Arrarnta, Warlpiri and English, and another two languages are being added. The Little Kids’ Word List app has been intentionally designed for fairer language assessments of the speech production and comprehension of young Indigenous children in Central Australia. The development processes explored the complex linguistic contexts, multilingual repertoires and cultural practices of the children’s families. This is reflected in the content and design of the app, making it appropriate for these young Aboriginal children developing their languages knowledge. In contrast to a monolingual English-based tool developed in different cultural settings, the Little Kids’ Word List app can make visible the Central Australian cohort's languages strengths and knowledge base.
... In Australia, a particular minority group that is negatively impacted by the use of standardised tools for language are Aboriginal people. Aboriginal Australian contact languages and Aboriginal ways of speaking English tend to be neglected in assessment processes and tools (Angelo, 2013). Additionally, within Australia's school system there is less support available for Aboriginal children who learn Standard Australian English as an additional language or contact language, in comparison to those from migrant families who learn English as a second language (Dixon & Angelo, 2014). ...
... This is a particularly important comment as it explicitly states that Aboriginal Australian children are scoring lower on standardised tests in all domains than non-Aboriginal Australian children. Angelo (2013) argues that these testing results may not reflect knowledge of the topic being tested, but rather the child's knowledge of Standard Australian English. ...
... Research in Aboriginal communities is important as findings can be translated into material effects that are key to reducing biases in standardised testing (Jackson-maldonado, 2013). Current practices for language assessment are increasingly relying on testbased tools which fail to acknowledge Aboriginal English and thus disadvantage these populations (Vagh et al., 2009;Angelo, 2013). Furthermore, these tools have not been normed on Aboriginal populations so there are no benchmarks for performance by Aboriginal children, and the only norms available are for non-Indigenous (and typically higher socioeconomic) populations. ...
Purpose: Standardised testing tools within an Aboriginal Australian context have been found to produce inaccurate results due to language and cultural differences. The primary aim of the study is to compare Aboriginal children’s scores in urban NSW across two language assessment tools: the Early Language Inventory (ERLI) and the Australian English Communicative Development Inventory, short form (OZI-SF). These tools are vocabulary checklists for children aged approximately 12–30 months. OZI-SF is an Australian tool for mainstream use and ERLI has been developed with and for Aboriginal families, but not in urban contexts, so its suitability there is unknown, given the great cultural and linguistic diversity among Aboriginal people across Australia. The second aim is to identify which tool is more culturally appropriate for urban Aboriginal families through parent perspectives.
Method: Overall, 30 parents (of 31 children) participated in the study to complete the ERLI, and 14 parents from this sample completed both the ERLI and OZI-SF and interviews to explore child scores and parent perspectives, in a mixed methods approach.
Result: Aboriginal children (N = 14) scored higher on the ERLI than the OZI-SF. Gender and age were significant contributors to the scores as scores were higher for older children and higher for girls than boys. In answer to the second aim, four themes emerged to explain parental perspectives and their preference for the ERLI, which supported connection to culture and language.
Conclusion: Findings have implications for paediatric language assessments with urban Aboriginal families in clinical, educational and research settings.
... NAPLAN is the same for all students, regardless of whether they come from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), or, like many Indigenous children, only encounter Standard English on entry into the school system where their SAE input is only from their teachers . In addition, the NAPLAN test has been widely criticized for not taking language background into account (Angelo 2013;Macqueen et al. 2019) nor the differing cultural knowledges, beliefs and practices of Indigenous students (Wigglesworth, Simpson, and Loakes 2011;Guenther, Bat, and Osborne 2013;Klenowski 2014). As a prominent measure of "success" used in the Australian schooling system, NAPLAN results position Indigenous students who do not speak SAE as their first language in deficit terms. ...
Most Indigenous peoples live in urban and regional locations across Australia and no longer speak their traditional languages fluently. Instead contact languages, creoles and dialects, are widely spoken. In many educational settings, educators may know little about the first languages of the Indigenous children they teach, and not recognise these as different languages or dialects. Consequently, these students may not be treated as second language learners of Standard Australian English (SAE) and their language learning requirements are not considered. From a sociocultural perspective, language is crucial to students’ learning. In this paper, we quantitatively analyse the SAE learning needs of Indigenous primary school aged children in Far North Queensland using oral elicited imitation of simple sentences in SAE as a research method. Using one-way ANOVA, the results are compared with native monolingual SAE speakers showing significant differences between the two. This finding has important implications for classroom teaching practices and educational policies.
... Sandefur 1985). Overall, education initiatives typically focus on raising awareness of creoles and contact language ecologies, recognising students' creole mother tongues, and their status as second/foreign language learners of English (Angelo 2013;Angelo & Carter 2015). The invisibility of creole-speaking student cohorts remains a prime concern, particularly since the 2008 advent of national high stakes standardised tests in English which distract from managing students' first and second language proficiencies for their classroom learning (Angelo 2012;Macqueen et al. 2019). ...
This chapter examines the place of creoles in the modern-day education milieu. It acknowledges the many ideological challenges and practical considerations for creoles in the educational space whilst bringing a multilingual education perspective to the fore. Using the concept of a contact language ecology, the chapter unpacks the language components that typically feature in multilingual education for creole speaking students. This approach reflects the linguistically heterogeneous contexts typically faced by education stakeholders in creole speaking speech communities that involve students’ creole mother tongue as well as standard languages and often heritage languages too. On-the-ground case studies in different jurisdictions are included to illustrate a range of educational initiatives that have been implemented for creole speakers and the kinds of factors that have influenced these, including language policy and planning.
... They are still often overlooked, as identification processes and support settings for migrant and refugee services are mismatched to Indigenous EAL/D learning contexts. Indigenous EAL/D learners, especially with un-/under-recognised contact languages (creoles and related varieties), can remain invisible in classrooms with mainstream curriculum and assessment practices (Angelo, 2013;Angelo & Hudson, 2018;Gawne et al., 2016;Macqueen et al., 2019). Hence, we argue that understanding and consideration of Indigenous EAL/D learners' needs should become a priority in TESOL initiatives. ...
... Kriol and Yumplatok/Torres Strait Creole have a few decades of official policy recognition (e.g. in Lo Bianco, 1987;HoRSCATSIA, 1992), so some communities and their schools are nowadays more likely to know these naming conventions and have a degree of awareness of these languages and speakers' EAL/D status. However, many speakers of new Indigenous contact languages have gone unrecognised, which means there is no data on them as L1 speakers of a language other than English to indicate students' likely EAL/D learner status (Angelo, 2013;Dixon & Angelo, 2014). ...
... Angelo, 2012;Angelo & Hudson, 2018;Fraser et al., 2018;Mushin et al., 2013) • education differentiation for students who speak new Indigenous contact languages ( Indigenous contact languages (e.g. Angelo, 2013;Hudson & Angelo, 2014, 2020 The majority of Indigenous EAL/D learners have as their L1s new Indigenous contact languages and, where these benefit from EAL/D interventions, Indigenised English dialects. This raises issues not experienced by most overseas background EAL/D learners and their teachers. ...
Indigenous learners of English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) have historically not been the central focus of TESOL expertise here in Australia, or overseas. Despite moves towards inclusion increasing over the last two decades, there is an ongoing tendency for Indigenous EAL/D learners to remain on the periphery of current TESOL advocacy, research and practices in Australia. They are still often overlooked, as identification processes and support settings for migrant and refugee services are mismatched to Indigenous EAL/D learning contexts. Indigenous EAL/D learners, especially with un-/under-recognised contact languages (creoles and related varieties), can remain invisible in classrooms with mainstream curriculum and assessment practices (Angelo, 2013; Angelo & Hudson, 2018; Gawne et al., 2016; Macqueen et al., 2019). Hence, we argue that understanding and consideration of Indigenous EAL/D learners’ needs should become a priority in TESOL initiatives. This paper aims to place Indigenous EAL/D learners at the centre by alerting the TESOL field to a recent body of research and development on new Indigenous contact languages and whole class EAL/D teaching and assessment practices. Clarifying substantial issues and providing solutions, the paper makes Indigenous EAL/D its central focus, highlighting areas that otherwise result in “forgettings” about needs particular to Indigenous EAL/D learners.Thus informed, the Australian TESOL profession will surely include First Nations EAL/D learners at the heart of future discourse and initiatives.
