Languages discourses in Australian middle-class schools: parent and student perspectives

Abstract

Much of the literature on social class and language study in schools argues that for middle-class parents and their children, languages are chosen for their capacity to offer forms of distinction that provide an edge in the global labour market. In this paper, we draw on data collected from interviews with parents and children in middle-class schools in Australia to demonstrate how a complex amalgam of elite, cultural identity and/or trade language discourses came into play to explain the choice (or not) to study a language and the choice of specific languages. For many of the parents languages provided a limited form of 'civic multiculturalism', as a means of better understanding and respecting the 'other'. We argue that the value attributed to high status languages via this discourse, means their continued presence in schools hoping to attract middle-class parents, but their relative absence in schools with largely working-class populations, where more 'practical' concerns dominate.

CLIL with languages other than English

“…All learners are considered different from one other, and each student is understood to bring unique experiences, strengths, and ideas to the learning environment-and these enrich the environment to the benefit of all Australia's successful 'rich task' EAL programme has enabled it to become the only OECD country where first-and second-generation migrant and refugee students score at or above the national average on international tests (Thomson et al, 2017). Cruickshank et al's (2018) study with eight low socio-economic secondary schools with high populations (80%+) of bilingual students focused on improving student engagement and teacher professional knowledge in science, language and literacy. Findings indicate substantial gains in working, thinking, and writing scientifically as a result of teacher sustained, onsite teacher professional learning and enquiry.…”

“…Issues of social justice are also present in the inequality of provision in disadvantaged schools, where choice of language is limited, and where community and lesser taught languages lack the opportunities and prestige of the most common languages (Collen, 2021a) and where the linguistic skills of these often bilingual and plurilingual learners tend to be overlooked. This is also true in Australia, where education in other languages is perceived to attract children from middle-class households (Wright et al, 2018). Turner and Cross (2016) argue for making space for multilingualism in Australia, noting that whilst the concept is gaining ground elsewhere, it is losing ground in there.…”

Plurilingualism and language and literacy education

“…The role of social class in languages and languages education also shows that the marketisation of schooling and the association of cultural capital to languages education differs across socioeconomic contexts (e.g. Perry & Southwell, 2014;Wright et al, 2018 research, for example, shows that the linking of languages with cultural capital is deployed by schools aiming to attract middle class parents, with an absence of this discourse in lower socio-economic schools. In these contexts, the community languages spoken by students are instead viewed as a hinderance, rather than of benefit to literacy acquisition and full access to the Australian workforce.…”