Spaces for learning: policy and practice for indigenous languages in a remote context

abstract

Bilingual and Indigenous language and culture programmes have run in remote Australian schools with significant and continuing local support. Developments such as the new national Indigenous languages curriculum offer a further opportunity to broaden and sustain Indigenous language teaching and learning activities in these schools. However, over the last two decades, increasing government attention to poor outcomes on national standardised literacy and numeracy assessments has markedly restricted the scope for Indigenous languages. This paper draws on a model of ideological and implementational spaces to discuss competing discourses in top-down and bottom-up policy. Data from an ethnographic study on education stakeholders in remote locations in Australia's Northern Territory revealed incongruities between local discourses that emphasise bi- and multilingualism, local identity and knowledge and community language maintenance and institutional discourses, which foreground a uniform model of education, with English literacy the dominant measure of educational success. The study also revealed that principals, teachers, and community members in some schools work together to develop vibrant, though often fragile, programmes. In addition to this, community members outside school systems are increasingly finding and taking up the spaces that allow innovative Indigenous language and cultural teaching and learning.

Keywords:

• Indigenous languages
• Indigenous education
• bilingual education
• language policy
• ethnography of language policy

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Marianne Turner and Russell Cross for their editorial assistance throughout the development of this paper. Thanks also to John Guenther and anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. The work reported in this article was supported by funding from the Australian Government Cooperative Research Centres Program through the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the CRC-REP or Ninti One Limited or its participants. Responsibility for errors or omissions remain with the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Many jurisdictions have developed Indigenous languages curricula (McKay 2011, 305–309).

2. See http://crc-rep.com/remote-education-systems

3. ‘Sorry’ or ‘sorry business’ refers to the mortuary rites that many Aboriginal people continue to observe. An important part of the practices associated with ‘sorry’ is gathering with extended family for often a number of days, many of whom will have travelled from other locations to attend.

4. For more on the Central Land Council Rangers, see http://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/clc-rangers1.

5. Track Dance Company and Milpirri – http://tracksdance.com.au/milpirri-jarda-warnpa.

6. Pintupi Anmatjerr Warlpiri Media – http://www.pawmedia.com.au/

7. For the sign language website iltyemilytyem, see http://iltyemiltyem.com/sign/ and furtherinteractive resources created in collaborations between Batchelor Institute, community language workers and educators, see http://central.batchelor.edu.au/cope

8. Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages – http://laal.cdu.edu.au/.