Dodgy data, language invisibility and the implications for social inclusion

Abstract

As part of the ‘Bridging the Language Gap’ project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be ‘invisible’ in several key and self-reinforcing ways in school system data. A proliferation of inaccurate, illogical and incomplete data exists about students’ home languages and their status as English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) learners in schools. This is strongly suggestive of the fact that ‘language’ is not perceived by school systems as a significant operative variable in student performance, not even in the current education climate of data-driven improvement. Moreover, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the annual standardised testing regime, does not collect relevant information on students’ language repertoires and levels of proficiency in Standard Australian English (SAE). Indigenous students who are over-represented in NAPLAN under-performance data are targeted through ‘Closing the Gap’ for interventions to raise their literacy and numeracy achievements (in SAE). However, Indigenous students who are EAL/D learners cannot be disaggregated by system data from their counterparts already fluent in SAE. Reasons behind such profound language invisibility are discussed, as well as the implications for social inclusion of Indigenous students in education.

The impact of national standardized literacy and numeracy testing on children and teaching staff in remote Australian Indigenous communities

“…Arguably, practices we have come to recognize as indications of fairness in educational testing such as 'careful standardization of tests and administration conditions' in the Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education (Joint Committee on Testing Practices, 2004) may well be the cause of ill-effect when the context, the educational environment and the test-taker linguistic background differs so markedly from the literacy practices valued by the 'standard language culture' (Milroy, 2001) and on which the construct is modelled. According to Dixon and Angelo (2014), this has resulted in a widespread ignorance of the value of multilingualism or need for English language learning for Indigenous children. In their view, Australia's 'monolingual mindset' (Clyne, 2008; see also Shohamy, 2011) has assisted the safe passage of NAPLAN 'literacy and numeracy testing' into schooling as if it were not in any language and hence fair, even for students who are speakers of Indigenous traditional and contact varieties, with little English proficiency.…”

“…This monitoring has consistently found that Indigenous children are not achieving at the same level as the rest of the population across all states (Ford, 2013). Angelo (2013) points out that the disaggregation of Indigenous students' scores has made this group 'highly visible' and hence subject to 'intensive educational interventions' on the basis of poor NAPLAN results, but with no recognition in the test data that many Indigenous children are also English language learners (p. 54, see also Dixon & Angelo, 2014).…”

Acquisition of Pitjantjatjara Clause Chains

“…However, census reports can be inaccurate (e.g.,Morphy(ed. ), 2007;Simpson, 2013;Dixon and Angelo, 2014). My own estimates place speaker numbers at a minimum of 2000.Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org…”

NAPLAN discourses: a systematic review after the first decade

“…Further, students with disabilities may be deprived of the right to NAPLAN participation, and adequate support for additional needs (Cumming & Dickson, 2013). Some scholars argue that NAPLAN has inadequate procedures for inclusion, and further discriminates against high-learning-needs students, by labelling them academic failures (Dixon & Angelo, 2014).…”