Listening to Learners’ Voices

This 2018 issue was initially intended as unthemed, but in fact a theme does emerge from the three papers – that of language learners’ voices, reminding us as educators of how much we need to listen – and the kinds of things we need to listen to more reflexively. Anna Filipi’s paper points to the frequent absence of the voices of international students in investigations, giving an account of their identities through a critical examination of English language learner categorisation. Suma Sumithran then asks how EAL/D teachers speak about their adult students’ language learning experiences, indicating that sometimes students’ voices are not heard in crucial ways, resulting in a perpetuation of cultural stereotyping, even if their teachers engage with them with the best of intentions. In an Australia characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, an examination of the hybrid and fluid identities of its peoples reveal that ‘othering’ based on geographical nation-state boundaries is highly problematic. Finally, Nicholas Carr and Michiko Weinmann look at written corrective feedback from a sociocultural angle to give an account of how the voices of adult English language learners in Japan reveal their experiences of processing teacher feedback through collaboration, both with peers and with the language teacher

Editorial: Teaching and learning English in the age of COVID-19: Reflecting on the state of TESOL in a changed world

As this issue of TESOL in context goes to press, we are looking back on a period of close to 18 months since the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality for Australia. The immediate, farreaching and ongoing impact of the pandemic on education has been captured and documented in much academic and professional debate to date (Kenley, 2020; Zentrum für Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung Bamberg (ZLB), 2020). Restrictions on travel resulting from the pandemic have severely impacted teachers, students and teacher educators all over the world (Tran, 2020)

Re-Imagining Asian Religious Identity: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Religion and Race in Australian Schools

This paper is drawn from a research project that investigates the relationship between teachers’ understanding of the religious identity of Asian background students, and recent Australian curriculum initiatives focused on religion and religious identification. Based on responses from an Australia-wide survey, and follow-up interviews from teachers and principals in several Australian states, the project examined the ways that Australian teachers understand, respond to and talk about the religious identities of their students, and the implications of these demands for teacher practice and education. This paper is concerned with the findings from the interview phase that for a significant number of teachers, notions of religion were often elided with culture and race, and often subsumed by broader notions of a nominal ‘white’ Australian culture. Research conversations appeared framed by an often Christian perspective and sense of self, as opposed to a putative and Asian religious and cultural other. We argue that a better understanding of the ways that teachers participate in discourses of representations about Asian religious identities negotiated by Australian diasporic communities has direct implications for the refinement of policy and for teacher professional learning. In the light of our findings, we further argue that there is a need for curriculum, teachers and researchers to move beyond an understanding of culture and identity that is based on monolingual, monocultural and Anglocentric perspectives that frame the foreign as the ‘exotic’ other, and define it through references to limited, tokenistic artefacts of culture, which are reinforced by iconic use of language to talk about culture, religion and identity

Editorial: Australian TESOL contexts; a state in flux

The factors influencing the multiple contexts of English language provision in Australia are complex, and this issue of TESOL in Context holds a lens to some of them: the first of the three articles presents a historical overview of provision for English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D, formerly English as a Second Language or ESL) in Australia, the subject of the second is screening for EAL kindergarten children, and the third discusses issues of internationalisation in a K-12 school. Reading these we are reminded that as TESOL professionals we work in an environment of continual change, forced to respond in a frequently ad hoc manner to a number of pressures, including federal and state politics. As far back as 2002 Joe Lo Bianco expressed concern (in this journal) that EAL/D learner needs were still not being met at that time, and the three articles in this issue throw light on why this is still too often the case, despite recent legislative emphasis on a ‘fairer Australia’ (Australian Government, 2011) in which a stronger acknowledgement, understanding and support for linguistic diversity should provide the foundation for a socially just society.&nbsp

When we talk about the teacher shortage, don’t forget those who teach English as an additional language

When we talk about the teacher shortage, don’t forget those who teach English as an additional languag

Languaging and language awareness in the global age 2020–2023: digital engagement and practice in language teaching and learning in (post-)pandemic times

This paper discusses key themes of the 15th biennial conference of the Association for Language Awareness (2020), with a focus on increasing digital engagement in language education. The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned an abrupt transition to emergency remote language teaching and learning (ERLTL) worldwide. The ALA 2020 conference was also affected by this transition; originally planned as a located conference in Geelong, Australia, it was eventually held online, a first in ALA’s conference history. The current paper engages with contemporary debates of language teaching and learning in two ways. Firstly, it traces recent discussions by presenting key findings from five papers given at the conference, and secondly, via a scoping review of literature focusing on critical lessons from the pandemic regarding language teaching and learning. The review captures recent research from the Australasian region. Key debates identified in the literature include the needs of teachers and learners during the transition to online learning, and how student engagement was affected. The literatures highlight that both educators and students have been developing new practices in teaching and learning resulting from the shift to online and blended modes, which may continue to shape language education and new pedagogies in the future