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In Australia, second language learners who qualify for educational support include refugees, newly arrived migrants, children of migrants born in Australia, and First Nation peoples who speak traditional languages or English lexified creoles (e.g., Kimberly Kriol) as their first languages. Within schools, this also includes those learners who fit the category of English as an additional dialect, such as those who speak Australian Aboriginal English as their first dialect. Supporting language learners to develop proficiency in Standard Australian English is the goal of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) educators. However, for First Nation peoples, their English language learning has very much been subject to the precarities of educational policy and the political winds of change, and their home languages have been cyclically suppressed, taught in conjunction with English via bilingual approaches, rejected, and again supported through language revitalisation initiatives. Throughout this tortuous language education process, the power for how language learning occurs and how home language use is supported has mostly rested with non-Aboriginal Australians. In this chapter, we describe a process whereby the power within an English language classroom for high school-aged Australian Aboriginal students is reconstructed by granting agency for pedagogical choices to the learners themselves. This approach works ‘for’ them, enabling them to become successful language learners, but also ‘with’ them by focusing on issues that are important to them (Ober et al., in press). This represents an important innovation as too often Indigenous English as an additional language/dialect (EAL/D) learners are constructed as ‘deficit’ learners. We describe how learner agency is powerful as it situates the curriculum where the learners are and where they want to go. Such an approach allows students to lead the learning experience themselves and provide scaffolding for their peers, whilst together promoting learning engagement.

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Granting Agency: Re-constructing Power ‘for’ and ‘with’ Australian Aboriginal EAL/D Learners

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Rhonda Oliver,
  • Sender Dovchin,
  • Ana Tankosic,
  • Helen C. D. McCarthy,
  • Lissy Jackson

摘要

In Australia, second language learners who qualify for educational support include refugees, newly arrived migrants, children of migrants born in Australia, and First Nation peoples who speak traditional languages or English lexified creoles (e.g., Kimberly Kriol) as their first languages. Within schools, this also includes those learners who fit the category of English as an additional dialect, such as those who speak Australian Aboriginal English as their first dialect. Supporting language learners to develop proficiency in Standard Australian English is the goal of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) educators. However, for First Nation peoples, their English language learning has very much been subject to the precarities of educational policy and the political winds of change, and their home languages have been cyclically suppressed, taught in conjunction with English via bilingual approaches, rejected, and again supported through language revitalisation initiatives. Throughout this tortuous language education process, the power for how language learning occurs and how home language use is supported has mostly rested with non-Aboriginal Australians. In this chapter, we describe a process whereby the power within an English language classroom for high school-aged Australian Aboriginal students is reconstructed by granting agency for pedagogical choices to the learners themselves. This approach works ‘for’ them, enabling them to become successful language learners, but also ‘with’ them by focusing on issues that are important to them (Ober et al., in press). This represents an important innovation as too often Indigenous English as an additional language/dialect (EAL/D) learners are constructed as ‘deficit’ learners. We describe how learner agency is powerful as it situates the curriculum where the learners are and where they want to go. Such an approach allows students to lead the learning experience themselves and provide scaffolding for their peers, whilst together promoting learning engagement.