policy challenges for bilingual and immersion education in australia: literacy and language choices...

This article was downloaded by: [Georgetown University]On: 05 October 2014, At: 10:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

International Journal of Bilingual Educationand BilingualismPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbeb20

Policy Challenges for Bilingual andImmersion Education in Australia: Literacyand Language Choices for Users of AboriginalLanguages, Auslan and ItalianMichèle de Courcy aa Department of Language, Literacy and Arts Education , University ofMelbourne , Parkville, AustraliaPublished online: 22 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Michèle de Courcy (2005) Policy Challenges for Bilingual and Immersion Education inAustralia: Literacy and Language Choices for Users of Aboriginal Languages, Auslan and Italian, InternationalJournal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8:2-3, 178-187, DOI: 10.1080/13670050508668605

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050508668605

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”)contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in thispublication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsedby Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liablefor any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and usecan be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbeb20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/13670050508668605

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050508668605

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Policy Challenges for Bilingual andImmersion Education in Australia:Literacy and Language Choices forUsers of Aboriginal Languages, Auslanand Italian

Michele de CourcyDepartment of Language, Literacy and Arts Education, University ofMelbourne, Parkville, Australia

This paper deals with the author’s recent work on political, sociolinguistic andeducational aspects of bilingual and immersion education in Australia. Among thecases considered are: the development of a professional position statement onbilingual and immersion education, to be disseminated to policy makers; advisingon an Auslan (Australian language of the Deaf) bilingual programme; and aproposed investigation of why there are no Italian late immersion programmes inVictoria, despite the importance of Italian as a community language of long standing.Several aspects of heritage/community language education in Australia will bediscussed: political issues of programme staffing and funding; the impact ofsociolinguistic factors, relating to a particular community language and how it isviewed by its own and other communities, on the types of programmes that will beundertaken; and the effect of educational decisions taken by school administratorson the language learning experiences of children in immersion programmes.

Keywords: bilingual education, immersion education, deaf children, languagepolicy, Australia

Australian Policy Context for H/CLEThe term ‘bilingual education’ is used in Australia to refer to both

education which uses and promotes two languages and education forlanguage minority children. This is a difference between a classroomwhere formal instruction is to foster bilingualism and a classroom wherebilingual children are present, but bilingualism is not fostered in thecurriculum. (Baker, 1993: 151�152)

The range of such programmes in Australia includes the following:

. early partial immersion programmes in primary schools;

. content-based programmes in primary schools which are taught less than50% in the minority or heritage language (HL)1;

. late partial immersion programmes in secondary schools and tertiaryinstitutions;

. teacher training programmes where the second language is the mediumof instruction;

1367-0050/05/02 178-10 $20.00/0 – 2005 M. de CourcyThe International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 8, No. 2&3, 2005

178

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

. programmes in Aboriginal communities where an Aboriginal language isthe first one used in the children’s school experience and English is addedlater (many of these are transitional bilingual programmes);

. language maintenance programmes where children receive part of theirinstruction in their heritage language, such as Greek or Vietnamese.

For further details of the range of programmes and the languages in whichthey are offered, see de Courcy (1999, 2002).

In recent years, Australian governments and education departments have,to an increasing extent, developed policies in favour of offering all children theopportunity of not only learning a second language, but of becoming moreproficient in it than had been the case in past years. Several policies at both thefederal and State level endorse the importance of immersion programmes as‘the best models for achieving high levels of communicative competence inLOTE’2 (MACLOTE, 1994). However, policy documents seem to take littleaccount of the needs of children from heritage language backgrounds.

At a symposium held at the Applied Linguistics Conference in Canberra inSeptember 1995, a number of people involved with heritage languageeducation compiled and signed a letter to the then Prime Minister and otherparliamentarians, which contained recommendations on bilingual support inearly childhood education. The following issues were noted in relation toheritage language children in Australia at the time:

. About one million children between the ages of 0 and 5 use both informaland formal child care services; and

. No specific provisions are made to cater for bilingual and LOTEeducation needs of these children.

This state of affairs may have negative consequences for the sociopsycho-logical development of LOTE-background children and may prevent thedevelopment of Australian language resources.

Our recommendations related to the above issues were that:

. language needs of children attending Early Childhood Educationsettings, such as Long Day Care, Family Day Care, Preschool and OutsideHours School Care and similar settings, be considered at nationallanguages and education policy levels following adequate consultationwith representatives of Early Childhood bodies, families, Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islanders, Ethnic Communities and experts in the field, inorder to identify the precise nature of such needs;

. adequate budgetary provisions be made to enable an equitable approachto meeting identified needs;

. language information collected in the context of the National Censusbe extended to the under-5 age group. (http://edweb.macarthur.uws.edu.au/larc/bil_fam/bifam03.htm)

A reply to this letter was not received, and none of the recommendationshave been taken up by the then Labor government or the subsequentconservative (‘Liberal’) government. Indeed, as Lo Bianco (2002b) notes, weseem to have gone from a position in this country where we were the envy of

Policy Challenges for Bilingual and Immersion Education 179

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

other countries for our language policies to a position where the country nowoperates without a languages policy at all.

During 1996 and 1997, the Australian Federation of Modern LanguagesTeachers decided to develop a number of position statements on areas of keyimportance to languages education in Australia. The Bilingual and ImmersionLanguages Education Special Interest Group (SIG), was given the task ofdeveloping the position statement on bilingual and immersion education.Members of the SIG and others interested in bilingual education werecanvassed as to what they saw as the key issues which needed to be addressedin a position statement, and the following were raised:

. definitions of bilingual and immersion education;

. teacher preparation;

. literacy in two languages;

. languages choice;

. resources;

. assessment; and

. research priorities.

All these issues continue to be of concern to teachers in bilingualprogrammes in Australia and are the subject of ongoing professionaldevelopment and research. I note that Pardo (2002) has outlined many similarissues in relation to Auslan education to those taken up in 1997 in relation tolanguages in general. In this paper, the issues of second language literacy andlanguage choice will be further elaborated in the context of heritage/community languages. At the end of the paper I will then briefly discusssome of the other issues which are noted in the case studies.

Literacy in Two Languages: The Northern TerritoryIn late 1998, several letters were written to the Minister for Education for the

Northern Territory, expressing concern about changes being made there tolanguage education policies. I wrote this letter, typical of the correspondence,in my role as convenor of the Bilingual and Immersion Language EducationSpecial Interest Group of the Australian Federation of Modern LanguageTeachers’ Associations.

It is with great concern that I read and hear of plans to discontinuebilingual education in the Northern Territory and replace it with Englishas a Second Language instruction.

It has been suggested that this change of direction has come aboutbecause of the lack of success of bilingual education in the NT inincreasing Aboriginal students’ English proficiency. However, thisargument seems at odds with what is known about education ofminority students in general, and Aboriginal students in particular.

Indeed, it has already been stated in Brian Devlin’s chapter in the‘Bilingual Interface Project Report’ (1997) that the 50/50 bilingual modelof education, which seems to be currently the preferred model in the NT,‘has not yet been adequately evaluated or researched’ (p. 84). He stated

180 The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

that ‘the ‘old’ staircase model of bilingual education rested on a bettertheoretical foundation’ (p. 84).

This theoretical foundation, as advocated by Cummins (1994), is that achild needs to have built up a ‘threshold level’ of proficiency in the firstlanguage, before proficiency in a second language can be attained.Indeed, there is research to suggest that a lack of proficiency in the firstlanguage results in what Skutnabb-Kangas (1979) terms ‘subtractivebilingualism’. This occurs where minority language children, educatedmainly via the language of power (in our case, English) do not attain fullcompetence in either their first or their second language.

The ‘old’ staircase model used in many schools in the NT, wherechildren were educated first in their home language and then graduallyintroduced to English, meets minority children’s needs better. It allowsfor the development of concepts of mathematics and literacy first in thehome language � concepts which can then be transferred into the secondlanguage, English. Admittedly, there were structural problems with suchprogrammes, due to the lack of availability of materials in the homelanguage and lack of teachers able to teach in the home language, withthe result that less time than necessary was spent teaching through themedium of the children’s first language.

However, rather than abandoning bilingual education totally, it wouldbe recommended that the NT Department of Education return toimplementation of the staircase model of bilingual education, and alsoconduct a rigorous evaluation of this model. I realise that it is counter-intuitive to advocate more time in the home language initially in order toincrease proficiency in the second language, English, but this has beenshown by Australian and overseas research to be the more likelyoutcome.

Please consider the language development needs of the children, andconsider a trial and evaluation of the staircase model (and, if necessarythe 50/50 model) before abandoning bilingual education.

In response to urgings such as these, the government decided to conduct sucha trial. And, in private schools, not totally reliant on government funding,bilingual programmes continue. Christine Nicholls discusses issues relating toAboriginal language education in her paper in this volume.

Language Choice #1: Auslan Bilingual ProgrammeAuslan is the natural sign language used by members of the Australian

Deaf community and is taught in Australian schools both to Deaf children as afirst/heritage language and to hearing children as a LOTE. During June, 2001,a meeting between school management, school community members andoutside advisers was held at a school which had been running an Auslanbilingual programme for several years. A complication at this school is thatthey were running a bilingual programme for one class per year level, whileteaching Auslan as a modern language to some other classes and while alsoteaching Indonesian as a modern language to the remainder.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

In addition, this programme encounters the particular difficulty noted byBaker and Prys Jones (2000) regarding the languages of the Deaf, i.e. Deafspeakers usually adopt as a written form of the language, the written form ofthe local vernacular (even though the structure of Auslan is different from thatof English). Thus, the hearing students in the programme are learning one newlanguage, Auslan, while the Deaf students are acquiring the written form oftheir second language, English, via the use of their first language, Auslan.

An evaluation of the programme had been conducted by Blanksby andPardo (1998, 1999). The evaluators concluded after two years of research thatthe programme ‘was perceived to be beneficial to the students in three mainways: social justice, social interaction and educational outcomes’ (Blanksby &Pardo, 1999: 27). The researchers also noted that most language gainsappeared to happen in the context of the classes in the content areas, ratherthan in those where Auslan was taught as a modern language. They stated that‘much of the language acquisition that has occurred in the school appears tohave taken place in classes where KLAs [content] have been taught in Auslanand as a result of communicative interactions between deaf and hearingstudents inside and outside of class’ (Blanksby & Pardo, 1999: 6). In this sense,the programme was operating more like a two-way bilingual programme thanan immersion programme, which does not usually enable such peer�peerinteractions.

However, the evaluators also noted some significant concerns, especiallyrelated to the difficulty of teacher�teacher communication when all were notproficient in Auslan, and the quality and outcomes of the LOTE (modernlanguage) programme, which was taught by staff with skills in the language,but without teacher training. Another problem was the increased workload forthe Auslan teachers due to lack of availability of curriculum materials. Itwould seem to readers of this evaluation report that the only part of themodern languages programme at the school which was working in terms oflanguage acquisition was the two-way bilingual classes.

However, two years after the completion of the evaluation, for reasons thatseemed perfectly pedagogically sound to nonlanguage educators, this is thedecision that the school administrators made. At the beginning of the 2001school year, the class that had been together as a bilingual class for three years(Prep 1�2) was broken up, and the children distributed to other classes, so thateach Year 3 class was made up of one-third children from the bilingual class,one-third children who studied Auslan as a modern language and one-thirdchildren who had taken Indonesian for three years. The reasons given were:

. The children in the bilingual programme were being perceived as an eliteand as ‘cliquey’ (cf. de Courcy, 1991a for discussion of an attempt touse this argument at a late immersion school in Queensland severalyears ago).

. It was felt to be not good for the children’s social development to be withthe one group of children all through their school years; that this wouldnot lead to them being socialised properly. The tragedy of this argumentis that, because of the hearing children’s proficiency in Auslan, the Deafchildren had been able to establish a wider friendship group than had


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

been possible for them previously. Indeed, the evaluators had noted theirconcern about what would happen when the children moved on tosecondary school in terms of the ‘social disadvantage to the deaf students(who would be separated from many of their friends)’ (Blanksby & Pardo,1999: 27).

. There was a perceived need to respond to parental requests with regardto the teachers and groups of children they wished their children to beeducated with.

Thus, the administration has removed the main language learningopportunity for the hearing students � social interactions with others in theclass � and held back the opportunity for the Deaf students to develop theirEnglish by removing all but a small number of the hearing students who coulduse Auslan from interacting with the Deaf students.

At the time of writing, there has, unfortunately, been no resolution of theissues outlined, but activism on the part of parents continues. It seems that, byusing the discourse of disability in relation to the Deaf students (rather thanthe more appropriate discourse of language minority students), the needs andlanguage development of both groups of students have been compromised.

As I warned as long ago as 1991, ‘bilingual/bicultural programmes could bea possible means of educating deaf children to use both English and a naturalsign language, but very careful thought would need to go into the planning ofsuch a programme. When planning the programme, it would seem to behelpful to consider the deaf learners as if they were members of a minoritylanguage group’ (de Courcy, 1991b: 49) with all that conception implies withregard to fostering threshold competence in the first language, valuingthe first-language culture and promoting additive rather than subtractivebilingualism. As noted by staff of the Tasmanian Claremont project (1997),‘Deaf children CAN read and write’.

Language Choice #2: The Case of ItalianItalian is an extremely important community language, with 160,061 native

speakers in the state of Victoria (143,406 of them in Melbourne) according tothe 1996 census (Clyne & Kipp, 1997). Italian is also important as a LOTE inschools as, according to the Department of Education, Italian is taught in 323government primary schools and 95 secondary colleges in Victoria alone.

However, in spite of the drive towards higher levels of communicativecompetence in LOTE and the importance of Italian as a community languageand as a LOTE in schools, it is surprising that no Italian immersionprogrammes have been set up in the secondary sector in Victoria. Why, giventhe success of late immersion programmes in producing competent users ofthe language of instruction, are Italian immersion programmes not morewidespread? The most salient research issue is how immersion works in acommunity with mixed ‘Italian’/‘non-Italian’ background.

Stanthorpe, in southern Queensland, has the only Italian language immer-sion education programme at secondary school level in Australia and perhapsin the world (Berthold, 1995). The Stanthorpe programme is radically


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

innovative and unorthodox in that it draws partly on students of Italianbackground and partly on students from non-Italian backgrounds, courting aclash of objectives between Italian language maintenance and learning and aclash of pedagogy suitable for both Italian and non-Italian backgroundstudents (Di Biase & Paltridge, 1985; Gatt-Rutter, 1992, 2000; Gatt-Rutter &Cavallaro, 1991; Swain & Johnson, 1997). Nonetheless, Italian immersion atStanthorpe is a recent arrival, dating from 1995.

Research needs to be conducted to identify the specific variables thatcontribute to the initial success and any unresolved problems of thisimmersion programme as well as their practical implications for theintroduction of ‘late’ immersion in Italian in other secondary schools. A firstaim would be to investigate the sociolinguistic composition of the Italianimmersion student cohort, classroom interactions (especially between studentsof different language backgrounds), use of English (if any), languagepedagogies used and precise combination thereof and immersion teachingmaterials (i.e. those relating to content subjects). This would be done bygathering relevant information and materials, utilising classroom observationwith audiovisual record, and conducting interviews with students, teachersand parents.

Such an investigation at Stanthorpe could then be accompanied by similarbut more limited investigations of other experiments in Italian late immersionin New South Wales and Western Australia. In addition, it might be followedup by sociolinguistic investigations into some of the more promising Victoriansecondary schools and their catchments and feeders, focusing on threemetropolitan and three regional schools. This research initiative would helpdetermine the following:

(1) language use (especially of Italian and dialects of Italian) among theschool and local populations;

(2) characteristics of classroom Italian (where taught) both in secondaryschools and feeder primary schools;

(3) attitudes to learning Italian and to the Italian immersion programmeamong learners, their parents, teachers, school and education authorities,and the general public;

(4) curricular materials, frameworks and standards for content subjects inItalian and English;

(5) availability of appropriately skilled and motivated personnel;(6) features of appropriately supportive institutional culture and infra-

structure.

ConclusionThe above cases highlight political issues of programme staffing and

funding; the impact of sociolinguistic factors, relating to a particular commu-nity language and how it is viewed by its own and other communities, on thetypes of programmes that will be undertaken; and the effect of educationaldecisions taken by school administrators on the language learning experiencesof children in immersion programmes in the cases of Northern Territory,


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

Italian and Auslan, respectively. They also foreground priorities that need tobe addressed in developing immersion and bilingual education HCLE inAustralia, namely teacher preparation, assessment, and research.

What is an appropriate level of language proficiency for an immersionteacher? What type of training in pedagogy is needed? What professionaldevelopment possibilities are there? These are some of the issues raised in theAuslan case study which are also taken up by Pardo (2002).

It is increasingly clear that a teacher in a bilingual programme needs to haveat least minimum vocational proficiency in order to be able to teach in anotherlanguage. Equally important is the person’s facility in using the language onan everyday basis, being comfortable in the language, and knowing colloqui-alisms and ways of talking to children. Especially important in terms oftraining is the need for bilingual teachers in primary schools to be primarytrained . Most language teachers are still prepared for the secondary classroom,which is very different from the situation they would find themselves in ifteaching in a primary immersion school. For teachers in late immersionprogrammes, there is an additional need for competence in the subject area inwhich they will teach.

Other issues relating to teacher development are those of burnout andcareer development. Immersion/bilingual teachers typically put in very longhours in preparation of materials for their classes. The ideal for teachers inthese programmes would be a reduced teaching load in their first yearteaching content via another language, in order to allow for preparation time.Experience has shown that this time needs to be allowed concurrently withteaching, rather than before a programme starts, to allow for trialing ofmaterials. This need also relates to the issue of adequate resourcing of suchprogrammes. ‘Resources’ in this case means both materials to teach with andprovision of funding and support at a school or system level. Governmentsand school boards need encouragement to recognise the fact that, while theseprogrammes can produce extraordinary results in terms of language profi-ciency and content knowledge, such programmes require a substantialinvestment of time, money and energy, and allowance should be made forthis in budgets and staffing allocations.

As one immersion teacher asked in the formulation of the positionstatement: ‘How do we assess and report on language acquisition when thefocus is on content? Does success in the content area confirm success inlanguage? What are the indicators for success in languages for immersionstudents?’ Not only are assessment measures for language learning absent, butwe also note that teachers in many states are required to report withinparticular frameworks designed for the key learning areas (Mathematics,Science and so forth), which are not easily adapted for reporting on immersionor bilingual students. More research is needed in this area as this issue needsto be monitored much more closely than it has been to date.

Finally, it is clear that there is a need for more research into immersion andbilingual schooling in Australia, especially in the areas of language learningprocesses, language development, assessment of English Language Learnersand the implementation of bilingual/immersion programmes. Not only must


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

implementation be informed by research, but research must be informed byimplementation.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Michele de Courcy,

Department of Language, Literacy and Arts Education, University ofMelbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia ([email protected]).

Notes1. Lo Bianco (2002a) uses 40% as the cut-off mark for such programmes.2. LOTE is the Australian term used for Languages Other Than English and includes

those languages formerly called ‘community languages’ and ‘foreign languages’.

References

Baker, C. (1993) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism . Clevedon:Multilingual Matters.

Baker, C. and Prys Jones, S. (2000) Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education.Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Berthold, M. (ed.) (1995) Rising to the Bilingual Challenge: Ten Years of QueenslandSecondary School Immersion . Canberra: NLLIA.

Blanksby, D. and Pardo, V. (1998) Evaluation of the English�Auslan bilingual programat _PS. Unpublished report.

Blanksby, D. and Pardo, V. (1999) The _ primary school English�Auslan bilingualprogram: External evaluation 1999 report. Unpublished report.

Claremont Project (1997) On WWW at http://www.aceinfo.net.au/Resources/ADD_FOLDER/ADD_listings/ADDclaremont.html.

Clyne, M. and Kipp, S. (1997) Linguistic diversity in Australia. People and Place 5 (3),6�11.

Cummins, J. (1994) Knowledge, power and identity in teaching English as a secondlanguage. In F. Genesee (ed.) Educating Second Language Children: The Whole Child, theWhole Curriculum, the Whole Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Courcy, M.C. (1991a) The Benowa experience: Student views of an immersion schoolin Australia. BABEL: Journal of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’Associations 26 (1), 10�16.

de Courcy, M.C. (1991b) Will ‘unlocking the curriculum’ achieve access in Deafeducation? Australian Teacher of the Deaf 31, 37�51.

de Courcy, M.C. (1999) L’immersion en Australie. Babylonia 4, 43�44.de Courcy, M.C. (ed). (2002) Immersion education Down Under. American Council on

Immersion Education: Newsletter May. Center for Advanced Research in LanguageAcquisition, University of Minnesota. On WWW at http://carla.acad.umn.edu/ACIEarticles/May2002_DownUnder.html.

Devlin, B. (1997) Links between first and second language instruction in NorthernTerritory bilingual programs: Evolving policies, theories and practice. In P. McKay etal . (eds) The Bilingual Interface Project Report . Canberra: DEETYA.

Di Biase, B. and Paltridge, B. (eds) (1985) Italian in Australia: Language or Dialect inSchools? Leichhardt, NSW: FILEF Italo-Australian Publications.

Gatt-Rutter, J. and Cavallaro, F. (1991) Voices of the generations to come: What futurefor minority immigrant languages? Vox 5, 76�82.

Gatt-Rutter, J. (1992) Transgenerational Language Maintenance? Policy Options forAustralia . Nathan, Queensland: Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, GriffithUniversity.

Gatt-Rutter, J. (2000) Italian�Australian futures: Language and citizenship. Publishedconference paper. In P. Genovesi and W. Musolino (eds) In Search of the ItalianAustralian into the new Millennium. Conference held in Melbourne, 24�26 May 2000.Reservoir, Victoria, Australia.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

Lo Bianco, J. (2002a) Evaluation Study: Lyons Primary School Italian Immersion Program.Canberra: Lyons Primary School. On WWW at http://www.lyonsps.act.edu.au/evaluation.htm.

Lo Bianco, J. (2002b) After NALSAS. . .? Australian Language Matters 10 (2), 1, 6�7, 9.MACLOTE (Ministerial Advisory Council on Languages Other Than English) (1994)

LOTE Report to the Minister for Education. Melbourne: Directorate of SchoolsEducation, October.

Pardo, V. (2002) On WWW at http://www.vsdc.org.au/resources/lote_submission.doc.Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1979) Language in the Process of Cultural Assimilation and Structural

Incorporation of Linguistic Minorities . National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 181 724.

Swain, M. and Johnson, R.K. (1997) Immersion education: A category within bilingualeducation. In R.K. Johnson and M. Swain (eds) Immersion Education: InternationalPerspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

0:18

05

Oct

ober

201

4

policy challenges for bilingual and immersion education in australia: literacy and language choices...

Documents