“understanding stories my way”: aboriginal-english

Department of Education

“Understanding stories my way”: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy

materials in Australian English

A Project of the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning

Licensed for NEALSOCS037 | Understanding stories my way: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English © 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WA

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© 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WA

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OCS037 | Understanding stories my way: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English © 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WA

“Understanding stories my way”: Aboriginal-English speaking students’

(mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English

A Project of the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning, funded by the Australian Research Council,

Department of Education (Western Australia), and Monash University

Farzad Sharifian, Adriano Truscott, Patricia Konigsberg, Ian G Malcolm and Glenys Collard


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...........................................................................4

FOREWORD .............................................................................................5

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................6

BACKGROUND .........................................................................................9

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY ......................................................... 22

CHAPTER II: FINDINGS .......................................................................... 30

CHAPTER III: EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS AND

IMPLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH ..................................................... 59

REFERENCES .......................................................................................... 97

APPENDICES ........................................................................................ 108


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The authors of this report would sincerely like to thank and applaud the students,

teachers, Aboriginal Islander Education Officers and principals of the following

schools who participated in this project:

North Beach Primary School

Medina Primary School

Hudson Park Primary School

Roebourne District High School

Waddington Primary School

Koondoola Primary School

Albany Primary School

We are extremely grateful for their endless patience, energy and support. It was

a pleasure to work with them. We also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the

project workers/assistant researchers and colleagues who have provided valuable

advice and support along the way, in particular, Sally-Anna (Anna) Edwards, Coral

Brockman, Karen Cowie, Gloria McCallum, Nola Bell, Nicki Patterson, Caelene

Bartlett, Mark Bonshore, Vivienne Little, Rachel Gibson, Anne Garlett, Narelle

Ryder, Selina Collard, Majella Stevens, Dorothy O’Reilly, Jacqueline Williams, Allison

Heinritz, Kelly Bentley, Kathrin Dixon and Anne-Marie Frassica.

We would also like to especially thank Carol Garlett for her contribution and support.

Funding for the project reported upon here was provided by the Australian Research

Council Discovery Scheme [project number DP0877310], the Department of

Education (Western Australia), and Monash University.


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A word from Glenys Collard (Senior Consultant for Aboriginal English/ESL/ESD)

We did this research to help people understand the cultural differences in our

classrooms.

This report shows that some of our Aboriginal kids have a strong Aboriginal

worldview from a very young age. This is something that can’t be taken away and

it affects their learning.

As Aboriginal people we are not giving our knowledge away, but we are sharing

what we found in the classroom so it can be shared with teachers and other

students.

The knowledge in this research comes from the kids. We need to work to allow

our kids to use this and be able to feel like they can participate and share with

other people in the class.

We need support from the community to validate what our kids bring to school

so that schools are able to take these understandings into account.

Our long term aim is for our kids to participate equally in the classroom and for

all kids to be able to learn about each other, from each other … where we can

start at a similar place to others without having to give up one thing for another.


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Aims, significance and background

One of our kids got into big trouble for calling one of his classmates ‘horse’ but

in our home talk ‘horse’ means ‘smart’. (An Aboriginal or Islander Education

Officer.)

Anecdotes such as the above are evidence of miscommunication between

Aboriginal-English speaking students and their non-Aboriginal classmates and

teachers. This is due to differences that exist between Aboriginal English and other

varieties of English spoken in Australia, including Australian English. But such

miscommunication does not stop at the level of conversation; it may extend to

Aboriginal students’ understanding of literacy materials used at school. That is, they

are likely to comprehend school literacy materials in terms of meanings in Aboriginal

English. This phenomenon, which may lead to alternative understandings of the

literacy materials provided, can be a significant factor contributing to Aboriginal

students’ lack of success at school. This project was an attempt to explore the

ways in which Aboriginal-English speaking students (mis)understand school-based

literacy materials written in Standard Australian English (SAE). The results will make a

significant contribution to Indigenous Education in Australia.

Significance of the project

Government reports, especially those published by the Department of Education,

Employment and Workplace Relations, have consistently, as a matter of urgent

national priority, called for an improvement in educational opportunities and

outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Despite a huge investment in funding various

programs to alleviate this problem, the issue has remained unchanged, largely due to

insufficient interdisciplinary scholarly research into its cause. A major survey of child

health in Western Australia has called urgently for the need to establish research

into this area. It maintains:

A national research agenda into Aboriginal education outcomes should be

developed that establishes a systematic, rigorous and sustained programme


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aimed at both charting progress in achieving improved educational outcomes for Aboriginal

students and at developing and evaluating programmes and strategies that produce

measurable improvements (Zubrick et al., 2006, p. 4, Recommendations Booklet).

The project that is reported upon here was a direct response to the above call. It systematically

explores the degree to which Aboriginal English students (mis)understand literacy materials written

in Standard Australian English (SAE). The results will have important implications for curriculum

development and teacher education. The significance of this issue is a reflection of the fact that

the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) aims

to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous students while respecting Aboriginal English.

The ministerial position is clear from the following undertaking:

Ministers commit to make progress towards:

2.2. developing and fully implementing by 2012 educational programs for Indigenous children

that respect and value Indigenous cultures, languages (including Aboriginal English) and

contexts, explicitly teach standard Australian English and prepare children for schooling

(The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education, 2005–2008, p. iv).

Currently, Aboriginal students are caught in a pincer. There is significant miscommunication

between them and their non-Aboriginal teachers on the one hand (e.g., Harris & Malin, 1994;

Sharifian et al., 2004; Lowell & Devlin, 1998; Malin, 1990), and lack of transparency in the literacy

materials to which they are exposed on the other hand (Malcolm et al., 2002). This is due to the

differences that exist between Aboriginal English and Australian English, assumed to be the only

correct form of English by most non-Aboriginal teachers. The same SAE is also used in school

literacy materials (e.g., Christie & Harris, 1985). The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education

(2005–2008) recognises the validity of this observation by referring to the work of the team

members as follows:

The literature also shows that standard Australian English spoken by Indigenous students

frequently shows evidence of conceptual features that are not shared with non-Indigenous

speakers; Aboriginal English shows itself at the level of conceptualization even when it is not

so apparent at the level of linguistic form. See, for example, the extensive body of work by Ian


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G Malcolm as well as recent work by Sharifian, ‘Cultural conceptualisations in English words:

A study of Aboriginal children in Perth’ (The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education,

2005–2008, p. 15).

What is now needed is a systematic exploration of the differences that exist between the

conceptual base that many Aboriginal-English speaking students draw on and the one that

underlies the literacy materials that are used at school. The results will then need to be fed into

every aspect of teacher education and curriculum development for Aboriginal students. Since the

mid 1990s, the Department of Education, Western Australia, has been running a program called the

ABC of Two-Way Literacy for Aboriginal English Speakers, to support research on Aboriginal English

and also to promote an understanding of this dialect among educators of Aboriginal students. The

ABC program has received support, on several occasions, from Australian Research Council (ARC).

The project reported upon here was carried out as part of the ABC program, further exploring the

conceptualisations that Aboriginal students bring to school and engage, making their own sense of

the school-based literacy materials written in SAE.


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Aboriginal students have a right to quality education that gives them the skills

for full participation in Australian society. However, in the past 30 years the

education system has failed to improve literacy outcomes for the vast majority of

Aboriginal-English speaking students. This failure affects all aspects of Indigenous

people’s lives, including their health, and has led to social problems of different

kinds. Dockett, Mason, and Perry (2006, p. 139) observe that “Aboriginal people

have been described as the most educationally disadvantaged group of people

within Australia”.

The existence of “non-standard” dialects has of course presented challenges and

dilemmas for educational programs worldwide (e.g., Heath, 1983; Siegel, 2006;

Smitherman, 2000; Nero, 2006; Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999). Issues in this

area range from miscommunication to the stigmatisation of students’ languages and

the marginalisation of the students themselves. In Australia, speakers of Aboriginal

English have been seriously affected by the differences that exist between their

dialect and the SAE promoted by the education system.

A recent large-scale investigation into the health, wellbeing and education of

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 0 to 17 years has presented

confronting evidence about the failure of the education system to improve the

educational outcomes of the vast majority of Aboriginal school children (Zubrick

et al., 2006). For instance, the survey states that “57% of Aboriginal students display

low academic performance compared with 19% of non-Aboriginal students – a

disparity of 38 percentage points” (Zubrick et al., 2006; Summary booklet, p. 26).

The survey also maintains that “no obvious progress has been made over the last

thirty years to effectively close the disparities in academic performance” (p. 2).

The survey has found relationships between the academic performance of Aboriginal

children and other issues such as the level of education of the primary carer, poor

school attendance, the students’ degree of risk of developing clinically significant

emotional or behavioural difficulties, and trouble getting enough sleep. Another

factor that correlated with academic performance and school attendance was the

language or variety of language spoken by the Aboriginal children at home.


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Aboriginal English carries with it distinctive linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and conceptual

characteristics (e.g., Eades, 1982, 1988, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000; Eagleson, Kaldor, &

Malcolm, 1982; Harkins, 1990, 1994, 2000; Malcolm, 1977, 1982, 1994a, 1994b, 2000, 2001a,

2001b; Malcolm et al., 1999; Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997; Sharifian, 2006).

For many Indigenous people, Aboriginal English is the first-learned form of English, and for

the great majority it is the form which carries their distinctive identity as Indigenous people.

It also encodes conceptualisations and schemas that are largely derived from Aboriginal cultural

experiences (e.g., Malcolm & Rochecouste, 2000; Malcolm & Sharifian, 2002; Sharifian, 2001,

2002a, 2002b, 2005; Sharifian & Malcolm, 2003; Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004). Before

presenting the methodology and findings, the following section provides some background on the

notion of “schema”, which is the main analytical tool used in the study reported here, as it has

been in earlier studies on this issue.

Schema theory

The notion of schema has proved to be of a very high explanatory power across various disciplines

such as cognitive science, education, artificial intelligence, cognitive anthropology and linguistics

over the last century (e.g., Bartlett, 1932; Bobrow & Norman, 1975; D’Andrade, 1995; Holland &

Cole, 1995; Minsky, 1975; Rumelhart, 1980; Sharifian, 2001; Strauss & Quinn, 1997). The term

“schema” was first used by Emanuel Kant (1787/1963). For Kant, schemas were general rules or

procedures of imagination by which an image is procured for a concept. In this sense, schemas

build a bridge between the image and the general idea (Van de Vijver, 1990).

The definition of schema is variable and largely depends on views held concerning the nature of

mental representations and, in general, the nature of human cognition. It seems that every new

paradigm and every sub-discipline in cognitive science provides its own interpretation of the notion

of schema. The multiplicity in the interpretation of the term is clearly captured in Reber’s (1985)

definition of schema in his Penguin Dictionary of Psychology:

A plan, an outline, a structure, a framework, a program, etc. In all these meanings the

assumption is that the schemas are cognitive, mental plans that are abstract and that serve

as guides for action, as structures for interpreting information, as organized frameworks for

solving problems.


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In cognitive studies, schema theory has enjoyed considerable popularity for both classicism and

connectionism (Rumelhart, 1980; Rumelhart et al., 1986; Schank & Abelson, 1977). Connectionists

define schemas as patterns of activation among strongly interconnected units in the human

memory network. Rumelhart et al. maintain that “[I]t is these coalitions of tightly interconnected

units that correspond most closely to what have been called schemas” (p. 20).

Schemas serve different functions in the interaction between cognition and the environment.

Taylor and Crocker (1981) have identified seven functions of schemas:

a. Providing a structure against which experience is mapped

b. Directing information encoding and retrieval from memory

c. Affecting the efficiency and speed of information processing

d. Guiding the filling of any gaps in the information available

e. Providing templates for problem solving

f. Facilitating the evaluation of experience

g. Facilitating anticipations of the future, specifically goal setting, planning and goal execution.

The concept of schema underlies other terms such as script, frame, global concept, scenario,

encyclopedic entry and plan as they are used in cognitive studies. Several classifications of schemas

have also been proposed. Cook (1994) makes a distinction between three types of schemas: world

schema, text schema and language schema. Cook uses “world schema” to refer to the schematic

organisation of world knowledge and “text schema” to refer to “a typical ordering of facts in a real

or fictional world” (p. 15). “Language schema” refers to generalised knowledge about the grammar

of a language.

Derry (1996) identifies three classes of schemas in the literature: memory objects, mental models,

and cognitive fields. A memory object is “a schema type that includes but is not limited to Piagetian

logical-mathematical schemes” (Derry, 1996, p. 167). Derry states that mental models “represent

situational understandings that are context dependent and do not exist outside the situation

being modelled” (p. 167). The definition of cognitive field given by Derry matches a connectionist’s

interpretation of schemas as distributed patterns of activation that occur in response to

external stimuli. It seems that these different schema types are, in fact, no more than different

interpretations of the same cognitive entity.


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In an intercultural study, Nishida (1999) extracts eight primary types of schemas for social

interactions as follows:

1. Fact-and-concept schemas: these are schemas that include factual information such as

“The capital of Australia is Canberra”, or conceptual information such as “A room has walls”.

2. Person schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about types of people,

including their personality traits, represented by sentences such as “John is taciturn”.

3. Self schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about the social self and the

individual self.

4. Role schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about achieved and ascribed

social roles and the expected behaviour associated with these roles.

5. Context schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about situations and

appropriate behaviour associated with them.

6. Procedure schemas: these are schemas that contain knowledge about the appropriate

sequences of events in frequently encountered situations.

7. Strategy schemas: these schemas include knowledge about problem-solving strategies.

8. Emotion schemas: these schemas contain information about effect and evaluation. Emotion

schemas have been shown to be activated through their association with other schemas.

Thus far, it is apparent that many of the schema types that have been discussed in the literature

have been classified on the basis of content orientation. A major problem with this kind of labelling

is the risk of an ever-expanding taxonomy. If schemas are classified according to the content

of human experience, which is potentially unlimited, the need for further labels may never be

satisfied. Another potential problem is labelling the same content or experience differently,

and therefore coming up with taxonomies of schemas that contain overlapping or redundant

categories.


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Culture and schemas

Schema theory provides a useful tool in studies of cognition, language and culture since it enables

a theoretical interface between cognition, culture and language (e.g., D’Andrade, 1995; Holland &

Cole, 1995; Malcolm & Sharifian, 2002; Rice, 1980; Sharifian, 2002a, 2002b; Shore, 1996; Strauss

& Quinn, 1997). It is generally agreed that schemas are cognitive phenomena that can be derived

from cultural experience and that are instantiated and embodied in linguistic expression (Sharifian,

2001).

Strauss and Quinn (1997) elaborately discuss cultural schemas within the framework of the

connectionist paradigm in cognitive science. As mentioned earlier, connectionists consider

schemas as patterns of activation among strongly interconnected units in the human memory

network. Strauss and Quinn (1997) believe that, to the extent that they are not predetermined

genetically, schemas are cultural (p. 7).

Sharifian (2011) offers a perspective on the notion of cultural schema that complements current

thinking in cognitive anthropology. This perspective draws on a view of cognition that is broader

than viewing schema as simply residing in the mind of an individual. His view is paralleled by those

of a number of other scholars (e.g., Cole, 1996; D’Andrade, 1995; Hutchins, 1995; Shore, 1996;

Strauss & Quinn, 1997). Hutchins, for instance, maintains that “culture, context, and history … are

fundamental aspects of human cognition and cannot be comfortably integrated into a perspective

that privileges abstract properties of isolated individual minds” (1994, p. 354). Similarly, within

the perspective of Sharifian’s theoretical model of cultural conceptualisations and language,

cognition is viewed as a property of not just individuals but also cultural groups. The minds of the

members of a cultural group appear to provide a network, collectively, in which representations

of cultural knowledge are instantiated. Therefore, culture needs to be viewed as more than just

a system of knowledge; it is a level of representation. Such a view further legitimises the concept

including cognitive anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, linguists, etc. under the umbrella term

“cognitive science”.


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If this view regarding cognition and culture is found to be legitimate, cognitive scientists will

need to explore how cultural knowledge is represented not only at the individual level, but at

the cultural level of cognition: how it is represented in the network formed by the minds of the

members of a cultural group. This question has so far been implicitly addressed by questions such

as to what degree cultural schemas are shared. Often, scholars working in this area have described

cultural schemas as being “shared”, “inter-subjectively shared”, or “widely shared”. It needs to be

highlighted that cultural schemas are not equally imprinted in the minds of the individual members

of a cultural group. Some individuals have access to some schemas that other individuals do not.

In this way, schemas are represented in a distributed fashion across the minds in a cultural group

(Sharifian, 2003, 2008, 2011). This view is further elaborated below.

Cultural schemas as distributed representationsSharifian (2011) views cultural schemas to be constantly emerging from the interactions between

the members of a cultural group. These schemas are dynamic conceptualisations that are

“negotiated” and “renegotiated”, so to speak, between the members and are passed on to newer

generations. Cultural schemas encompass cultural concepts, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values

and norms that lay the foundation for human reasoning within different cultures.

The notion of “distributed representation” is used in cognitive science to describe how knowledge

is represented in the human mind. Van Gelder observes that the idea of distributed storage of

knowledge, as opposed to local storage, in the brain dates back to the 19th century. He notes that

the rise of connectionism generated new interest in a range of technical and philosophical issues

related to the notions of distributed and local representation. He further notes that the dichotomy

between local and distributed has been used in many different ways, often vaguely and/or

ambiguously. Van Gelder (1999) notes, for example, that in one interpretation, two or more items

may be viewed as being simultaneously represented by one and the same distributed pattern.

According to a different interpretation, a single item may be viewed as represented by a pattern

over a pool of units.

Beyond the level of the individual, notions of distributed representation have been used by

Hutchins and his colleagues, for about three decades now, to encompass interactions between


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people and people’s interaction with resources and materials in the environment (e.g., Hutchins &

Klausen, 1996). According to this theory of cognition, cognitive processes are viewed in terms of

the functional relationships among the participating elements in the process, whether or not these

elements reside in humans or in the environment. A major breakthrough produced by this view

of cognition is the treatment of culture as playing a major role in human cognition (e.g., Hutchins,

1995). On one hand, culture emerges from social, mental and material activities while on the other

hand, culture shapes the cognitive processes that are distributed over the agents, artefacts and

environments of a cultural group.

In regard to cultural schemas, it should be stressed again that these schemas are not completely

or equally shared by all the members of any cultural group. In reality, people may share some

elements, but not others, from any cultural schema. Swartz (1991) repeatedly highlights this

point in his treatment of the world of the Mombasa Swahili. Swartz notes that “cultural elements

are unevenly distributed even among those who are directly affected by them” (1991, p. 271).

However, he notes that “[l]ess than universal sharing of elements within a group is not necessarily

a hindrance to the effectiveness of those elements or of the culture as a whole” (p. 271). This

incomplete sharing of cultural schemas may best be captured by the notion of heterogeneously

distributed representation (Sharifian, 2011), which views cultural schemas as being represented

in a distributed fashion across the minds of networked individuals in a cultural group. The notion

of distributed representation here denotes a configuration that is represented in the following

diagram from Sharifian (2011, p. 6):

Distributed, Emergent Cultural Cognition

A B C D E

BCD

BCDE

BCE

BDE

A

ABDE

ACDE

ADE

ABCD

ABD

CDECD


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It should be noted here that the simple network modelled above is not to be taken as a

reductionist attempt to model the relationship between culture and cognition. It is simply meant

to provide an anchor point to help one picture cultural schemas as they may be represented at the

group level. However, the model does challenge those who present culture as being equally shared

by all the members of a cultural group. It is not uncommon to hear proposals involving a “common

core” of cultural knowledge from those who hold a view that schemas are homogeneously

distributed. In fact, this is the most common assumption on the basis of which people engage in

interaction and does not appear to have a real counterpart in a culture as a whole.

The diagram depicts a cultural schema as a collective, emergent property of the network that is

composed of the minds of the people in a cultural group. It can be seen that units in the network

may share one, two, or more elements from a cultural schema and these shared configurations are

not the same for all the units in the network. That is, two units may share A and B but not C and D,

while two other units may share C and D but not A and B. Thus, the units might be different from

each other in terms of what they share and how much they share with others. Some pairs of units

may not even share one element from this schema, but may, nevertheless, still be considered to be

members of the same cultural group due to their sharing elements from other cultural schemas.

As for the factors responsible for whether elements of a cultural schema are shared or not shared,

demographic factors like age, gender and education are likely to make a contribution.

It is to be noted here that patterns of overlap between different people’s knowledge of a cultural

schema, or the coherence of their knowledge, may vary across different cultures. That is, cultural

schemas may be represented more coherently across one cultural group than another. This

coherence indicates various factors such as the integrity, uniformity and solidarity of cognitive

systems and sub-systems across the target cultural group. Thus, we may expect less coherent

cultural schemas in cultures where people lead rather individualistic lives.

To understand the model, neither the individual units nor the cultural schema as a whole should

be taken as static entities with fixed contents. As mentioned above, people “negotiate” and

“renegotiate” cultural schemas in their constant interactions through space and time, and this


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means both the individual units and the cultural schemas are dynamic in terms of their content.

However, it should not be assumed that all cultures necessarily undergo changes in their schemas

at the same rate. Various factors such as technological advancements and contact with other

cultures may in practice determine the degree to which cultural schemas change. As for the

individual members of a cultural group, again, issues such as education and a change in age may

lead to a change in one’s schemas.

Cultural schemas may be instantiated in various cultural activities and artefacts. All levels of

language, for example, may be used to instantiate cultural schemas (Palmer, 1996; Malcolm &

Sharifian, 2002; Sharifian, 2001). Non-verbal aspects of communication and even silence may

reflect conceptualisations that are culture specific. Cultural schemas may also surface in various

forms of art, such as painting and even dance. Schema instantiation in this sense refreshes,

reinforces, maintains and expands cultural schemas. The following section presents a brief review

of some previous studies that explore the cultural schemas held by Aboriginal-English speaking

students.

Research on cultural conceptualisations and schemas in Aboriginal English

A pioneering study into the conceptual basis of Aboriginal English was undertaken by Malcolm

and Rochecouste (2000). They analysed a sub-corpus of Aboriginal-English texts to identify the

event and story schemas that formed the experiential basis of these texts. They observed that the

majority of the texts analysed appeared to be associated with schemas that were derived from

Aboriginal experiences of travelling and hunting, as well as with spiritual experiences of Aboriginal

speakers. In particular, the majority of the texts appeared to be associated with the following

schemas:

• Travel schema – the representation of the experience of known participants, organised in

terms of alternating travelling (or moving) and with stopping segments, usually referenced

to a time of departure and optionally including a return to the starting point (see Malcolm,

1994a, for more details).


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• Huntingschema – the representation of experience of known participants, organised

with respect to the observation, pursuit and capture of prey, usually entailing killing and

sometimes eating the prey. Success is usually associated with persistence expressed with

repeated and/or unsuccessful hunting activities (e.g. shooting and missing, looking and

never finding). There are a number of sub-schemas associated with hunting, including

Cooking, Fishing and Spotting the prey.

• Observing schema – the representation of experience, usually shared, in terms of observed

details, whether of natural or social phenomena.

• Scary Things schema – the representation of experience, either first-hand or vicarious, of

strange powers or persons affecting normal life within the community and manifest in the

description of appearances and disappearances, or seeing or not seeing/finding evidence of

the spiritual phenomenon in question.

Sharifian (2001) observed that Aboriginal-English speakers often operate on the basis of widely

shared schemas and thus do not find it necessary to produce lexically and structurally complex

utterances when referring to experiences that touch on them. Sharifian (2002b) observed that

Aboriginal-English narratives do not seem to rely on clock-and-calendar timeframes to establish

an anchor point in the discourse. Instead, the narrative tends to revolve around a place or event

of significance. A good number of the texts in Aboriginal English that that have been analysed

begin with utterances such as In Geraldton …, or It was in Nanna’s funeral … These features are

in consonance with Aboriginal cultural experience in which time spent in one’s “country”, in the

Aboriginal sense, or events such as one’s grandmother’s funeral, hold much more significance than

a chained sequence of experiences organised according to a linear conception of time.

Sharifian (2002a, 2005, 2008) developed a data collection technique that qualitatively

explores patterns of wood-association responses for what they reflect about the underlying

conceptualisations, such as schemas, that speakers draw upon. Data collected using a list of

everyday words such as “family” and “home” from two groups of Aboriginal and Anglo-Australian

students revealed differences as well as similarities in the chain of responses evoked. For example,

for Aboriginal students the word “family” appeared to be associated with categories in Aboriginal


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English that move far beyond what is described as the “nuclear” family, which is the central notion

in Anglo-Australian culture. Consider the following table of data from Sharifian (2002a):

Aboriginal Anglo-Australian

Stimulus word: Family Stimulus word: Family

• Love your pop, love your nan, love our

mums, love our dads.

• Brothers, sisters, aunnie, uncles, nan,

pops, father, nephew and nieces.

• They’re there for you, when you need

‘m they look after you, you call ‘m

aunie and uncle an cousins.

• People, mums, dads, brother, group of

families, like aunties and uncles nanas

and pops.

• I’ve got lots of people in my family, got

a big family, got lots of family.

• My family, you know how many family

I got? One thousand millions, hundred

ninety-nine million thousand thousand

nine nine sixty-one … million million,

uncle, Joe, Stacy, … cousins, uncles,

sisters, brothers, girlfriends and my

million sixty-one thousand family

• I like my family, all of my family, my

aunties an’ uncles and cousins, and I

like Dryandra.

• Just having family that is Nyungar [an

Aboriginal cultural group] and meeting

each other

• You got brothers and sisters in your

family and your mum and dad, and you

have fun with your family, have dinner

with your family, you go out with your

family.

• Dad, mum, brother, dog.

• Mum, and dad, brother and sister.

• Fathers, sisters, parents, caring.

• People, your mum and dad, and your

sister and brother.

• All my family, my brothers and sisters,

my mum and my dad.

• Kids, mums, dads, sisters, brothers.

• Mother, sister, brother, life.

• Mum, dad, my brother.

• I think of all the people in my family

[F: Who are they? I: My mum, my dad,

an my sister]

• They have a house, they have a car,

they have their kitchen, their room,

their toilet, their backyard, their

carport, they have a dog and a cat.

The responses given by Aboriginal participants refer to members of their extended family, such

as aunts and uncles, and as such they instantiate the Aboriginal cultural schema of Family.


20

The responses from the Anglo-Australian participants suggest that the word “family” is in most

cases restricted to a schema that includes the members of what is described as a “nuclear family”,

while sometimes including pets kept in the house.

Responses such as they’re there for you, when you need ’m they look after you by Aboriginal

participants reflect responsibilities of care between the members of an extended family. Uncles

and aunties often play a large role in an individual’s upbringing. The closeness of an Aboriginal

person to his or her extended family members is also reflected in the patterns of responses where

the primary responses refer to uncles and aunties or nana and pop instead of father and mother.

Responses such as my million sixty-one thousand family and I’ve got lots of people in my family

reflect the extended coverage of the concept of “family” in the Aboriginal conceptualisation.

The word “home” appeared to be mainly associated with family relationships rather than a building

used as a dwelling by a nuclear family.

The precursor to the study proposed here was a recent project (Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm,

2004; Sharifian, Malcolm, Rochecouste, Königsberg, & Collard, 2005), funded by the Department

of Education in Western Australia, which explored the schemas that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal

educators bring to the task of comprehending oral narratives produced by Aboriginal children.

During each data collection session, each participant was asked to respond to a series of eight

narratives, which were selected from the Corpora of Aboriginal English, and then recall each

narrative immediately after listening to it. The narratives were orally produced by a number of

Aboriginal students and came from data collected in previous projects.

The data were then analysed in three stages. The first stage involved the analysis of recalls into

smaller meaning units, called idea units. This was carried out to examine the content schemas that

were employed by the participants in comprehending the original narratives. The second stage was

a comparison of the rhetorical organisation, or formal schemas, of the original narratives and the

recalls by the participants. Finally, the recalls by Aboriginal participants were examined to see if

they reflected any general interpretive patterns.

To carry out an idea-unit analysis of the recalls, the original narratives first needed to be analysed

for the idea units they included. Overall, it was possible to observe a continuum of familiarity


21

on the part of participants with the schemas that appeared to underlie the narratives. A good

number of the recall protocols by non-Aboriginal participants suggested a bottom-up approach to

comprehending discourse, in the sense that they generally recalled the minimal elements of the

original narratives, and used these as they attempted to reassemble the narrative. Consider the

following example:

There was somebody and they smelt petrol gas or something, someone cooking in the kitchen…

Some non-Aboriginal participants appeared to rely on their own individual and cultural schemas,

which appeared to be different from the ones that were associated with the original stories, in

comprehending the texts and thus produced information that had not been present in the original

narratives. For example, in responding to a narrative about hunting a kangaroo, one teacher

described the hunters as being in a cave, when no cave had been mentioned in the original

narrative. This kind of reconstruction is an indication of unfamiliarity with the cultural schemas that

informed the original narratives.

The results of the analysis of rhetorical organisation, or “formal schema analysis”, revealed that

the original narratives did not always rely on the chronological ordering of events and that some

participants in fact showed a reordering of the passages in their recall. The recalls by Aboriginal

participants revealed a tendency towards a holistic and top-down approach, often elaborating on

the cultural schema that was reflected in the original narratives to assist the comprehension of the

non-Aboriginal listener. For example, an Aboriginal listener began his response to a hunting story

by starting with the words “like most of us do”.

As mentioned above, the findings of the study suggested non-Aboriginal teachers had different

degrees of familiarity with the schemas that informed the Aboriginal-English narratives. Inasmuch

as these findings may be representative of what happens in real classroom situations, they reveal

there is a significant potential for miscommunication between Aboriginal students and those

non-Aboriginal teachers that are not familiar with these schemas.

In the current project, the role of the participants was reversed. This time, Aboriginal students

listened to stories read aloud by their teachers from story books and then they each produced

a recall of these stories. The aim was to explore the schemas that Aboriginal children employ in

making sense of such stories.


Ap

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Research approach

Although the issues related to the use of “non-standard” varieties in education have

received some attention worldwide (see Siegel, 2006), there have been very few

empirical studies addressing the acquisition of standard varieties by “non-standard”

speakers. This study and its precursor are innovative in that they employ the

analytical tools of cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology within the general

framework of sociocultural approaches to language in order to provide a deeper

understanding of Aboriginal children’s approach to literacy learning and the general

relationship between language, culture and conceptualisation.

To date, the issues of non-standard dialect speakers have fallen under

sociolinguistics, and there has been little interest in pursuing the issue from a

cognitive perspective. This has partly been due to the narrowness of the frameworks

that have been applied to human cognition, which have not paid due attention

to sociocultural foundations of human cognition. On the other hand, studies of

Indigenous education worldwide have often distanced themselves from disciplines

such as linguistics and have mainly focused on identifying general factors that

contribute to poor academic performance on the part of Indigenous students,

such as health and socioeconomic conditions. This general lack of communication

between disciplines in relation to the issues facing Indigenous students in

educational systems has not helped alleviate the problems and lead to better

outcomes.

This study brings to the issue of Indigenous education a framework informed by

recent advances in cognitive linguistic studies that view sociocultural factors as

fundamental to human cognition and learning. This emerging field is variously

referred to as applied cultural linguistics (Sharifian & Palmer, 2007), and cognitive

sociolinguistics (Kristiansen & Dirven, 2008). The analytical tools that have been used

in this general area have now been used in studies of second language teaching and

intercultural communication in other linguistic contexts, such as Chinese, Japanese,

African English and Arabic (see studies in Sharifian & Palmer, 2007).


23

The current study and its immediate precursor also developed a rigorous methodology which

employs the data analysis technique of “idea-unit” analysis in exploring the schemas as they are

reflected by a speaker’s recall of a text. In other words, the study develops a novel framework that

makes use of a rigorous text-analysis technique in analysing the cultural–conceptual foundation of

an indigenised dialect of English for a sociolinguistically oriented objective.

Participants

The Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers, who collected the data, were part of the ABC of

Two-Way Literacy and Learning program of the Western Australian Department of Education (DoE)

and Monash University.

The schools

Ethics approval was obtained from Monash University and permission was given by the Western

Australian DoE to approach the schools. School selection was based on the proportion of the

population of students identified as Aboriginal and on the willingness of school leadership to be

participating in the research.

Each school was asked to provide an Aboriginal or Islander Education Officer (AIEO) to assist in the

research. Their presence was mainly for the benefit of the Aboriginal students and in particular

they were able to take on roles of:

• providing vital background information on the students as the AIEOs were familiar with

them (Appendix 1)

• advising on the interpretation of aspects of the recalls

• sitting with the Aboriginal students to help them feel comfortable, providing support if

needed.

Staff

A non-Aboriginal project teacher was employed to read pre-selected stories to the students in a

manner consistent with general classroom practice. That is, the narrative would be read to the

student, and the student would be asked questions and allowed to make comments following


24

the reading. This individual project teacher was used in most cases, depending on the location of

the school. When she was not available, an alternative teacher was sourced.

The teachers and AIEOs of the selected schools were consulted over which students were likely to

show willingness to participate in the study. Schools were provided with relief teachers if needed.

A Student Background form was developed by the research team to brief all concerned to the

point of having a detailed understanding of the students’ sociocultural influences and academic

and behavioural patterns (see Appendix 1). The AIEO of each school was asked to fill out a Student

Background form for each student (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) and these were discussed with

the researchers. Consent was sought from the students, their parents and the school principal.

All parties were offered the right of withdrawal from the study and were assured confidentiality in

regard to the dissemination of the data.

Students

Two experimental groups were used to provide a basis of comparison: Aboriginal and non-

Aboriginal students. Forty-four Aboriginal and 20 non-Aboriginal students in Years Four and Five

(aged from nine to 11 years) were asked to participate in the study from seven primary schools

across Western Australia (five were in the metropolitan area of Perth and two were in rural areas).

Instrument

The five source texts used for the study were selected by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators

and represented a range of child fiction genres identified as frequently used at these schools.

The stories were varied in terms of genre and cultural underpinnings. They are listed as follows:

1. Fairytale (non-Aboriginal perspective): Puss in Boots by Frances Sargent Osgood (1842).

2. Aboriginal Australian folklore: Magic Colours by Cecilia Egan (1999).

3. Non-Aboriginal fables: The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack (1933).

4. Non-Aboriginal fiction: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat by Jenny Wagner & Ron

Brooks (1978).

5. Realistic fiction: Bushfire by Marguerite Hann Syme (2000).


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Procedure

1) Pilot

A pilot study was carried out to ascertain the best procedure that would:

• help the student to feel at ease

• give the student a break between the storytelling and the recall stages

• determine the most appropriate non-linguistic interpolated task

• ensure that students would not talk to each other (or conduct any form of internal

monologue) about any of the stories.

2) Main study

The participants conducted the storytelling and recall sessions in the form of an informal

one-to-one interview (with the AIEO seated next to the student for support). The students were

not allowed to see the book or the images therein, thereby encouraging them to rely only on their

own conceptualisations as these were evoked directly from the verbal storytelling. While it may be

normal classroom practice to share the images with the students, this method would encourage

more reliance on cultural conceptualisations generated by the written text.

The agreed procedure was as follows:

1. The teacher reads the story to the first student in a one-to-one interaction. No images are

shown (see Photo 1).

2. The student then goes to a separate room to engage in an interpolated task, which does not

encourage or facilitate reflection on the story.

3. The student returns to the interview room for recall after between five and 10 minutes.

4. When the student is finished, the teacher is encouraged to prompt for more information.

If the student has nothing to say, the teacher could prompt with questions like,

“What happened after X?”, “Did you like the story?”, and “Why?”.

5. End of interview.


26

6. The same procedure was then followed for all the other students in turn.

7. The next text was read at the following session.

Photo 1: The storytelling session

Data analysis

The selected texts and recall interview transcripts were analysed based on the recall analysis

model developed in Sharifian et al. (2004). Coding was conducted by a panel of Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal researchers and assistants.

The recall protocols produced by the participants were analysed in terms of their “idea units”

(e.g., Johns & Mayes, 1990; Ross et al., 2005). Ross et al. (2005, p. 1178) define an idea unit

as “a phrase that communicates one complete idea, action, thought, feeling, or detail”. The

aim of idea-unit analysis was to investigate the content schemas that participants employ in

comprehending the original stories. First, the idea units in the original stories were identified.

Johns and Mayes’ classification (detailed in Table 1) was used to discern the idea units in this study.

This classification is based on Kroll’s (1977) system, and includes some additions by Carrell (1985).


27

• A main clause is counted as one idea including (when present) a direct object, an adverbial

element and a mark of subordination.

• Full relative and adverbial clauses are counted as one idea unit.

• Phrases, excluding “transitional” ones, which occur in sentence initial position followed

by a comma or phrases which are set off from the sentence with commas are counted as

separate idea units.

• Reduced clauses of various types, including most gerundives and infinitival constructives,

are separate idea units.

• Post-nominal –ing phrases used as modifiers are counted as one idea unit (for example,

So animals just remain in the water, dying).

• In a clause with a compound verb, the second verb phrase is counted as a separate idea unit.

Multiple subjects and multiple direct objects also indicate separate idea units.

• Other types of elements counted as individual idea units are:

Absolutes: for example, Its concern heightened, the government will urge industries to

improve.

Appositives: A major type of pollution, thermal pollution, is discussed in this article.

Table 1: Idea Unit Classification (Source: Johns & Mayes, 1990, p. 258)


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The recall analysis sheet

To compare the idea units recalled by the participants with the idea units in the original stories, the

following scale from Sharifian, Rochecouste and Malcolm (2004) was used:

Recall type Description

Correct recall instances where participants recalled a complete idea unit from the

original narratives

Partialrecall instances where participants recalled part of an idea unit from the

original narratives

Distortion/reinterpretation

instances where participants recalled a distorted version or an

alternative interpretation of an idea unit from the original narratives

Addition instances where participants recalled an idea unit that was not part of

the original narratives

Omission instances where participants failed to recall an idea unit from the

original narratives

Table 2: Classification index for recalled idea units (Developed by Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004)


29

The following list provides an example for each of the above categories.

Recall type Description

Original sentence My uncle was chasing a kangaroo.

Correct recall The uncle was chasing a kangaroo.

Partialrecall The uncle was chasing something.

Distortion/reinterpretation The dog was chasing a kangaroo.

Addition The uncle was chasing a kangaroo and he ran over it.

or

There was a cave.

Omission a case where neither the uncle nor the chasing of the

kangaroo was recalled

Table 3: Examples of recalled idea units (Source: Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004)

The analysis of the links between each idea unit and the schemas instantiated by them was carried

out by way of a series of data analysis meetings with the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members

of the research team.

The significance of idea-unit analysis for the exploration of schemas is multifaceted. The partial

recall of idea units may, for example, be attributed to unfamiliarity with the schemas that inform

the original discourse. Additions or alternative interpretations on the other hand generally

originate from the schemas that participants bring to the task of making sense of a text. Alternative

interpretations in particular may well arise due to a discrepancy between the schemas that are

associated with the original texts and those that are activated as a result of the participants

listening to the texts. “Additional” idea units may be of two types: those that fit with the schemas

associated with the original texts, and those that do not fit with these schemas. The latter may

arise from idiosyncratic or culturally different schemas that the participants employ in trying to

comprehend and recall the content of the original narratives.


30

Ch

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SFindings

This research, which investigated how linguistic variations from the original text

present in students’ recalls, indicated that the content of that recall was driven by

different interpretive schemas to those which were intended to be evoked by the

author. When a student reinterprets a text by applying different schemas to those

that were intended by the author of the original narrative (or indeed, those which

have been perceived by the teacher to be appropriate), then we can say the text has

been reschematised. This term is used as a more nuanced reflection of the process of

interpretation in cross-dialectal communication as it attempts to identify the origin

or nature of the reinterpretation or perceived misinterpretation. Consequently,

it provides a platform on which more accurate discussion about cross-cultural

communication can be achieved. Furthermore, it implies a more positive appraisal

of the student’s narrative, valuing it as a narrative in its own right, rather than as a

deficient recall (e.g. as a “distortion” of the original narrative).

Reschematisations were evidenced by the recalls of a number of the Aboriginal

students; and, as we shall see, these reschematisations produced both subtle and

radical alternatives to the original text.

The process of reschematisation

Reschematisation may be identified in several ways. As noted above, the schemas

which inform the recall of the text will have been evoked from a range of sources

in the original narrative. The student’s ability to access the relevant schema

required to make predictions and interpret the text as the writer/speaker intended

depends on having the appropriate and activated prior knowledge. In processing

incoming information, schemas will be evoked in competition with each other

until the most appropriate schema is selected. In the absence of the required

schema, in interpreting and thence reproducing linguistic input, listeners are likely

to resort to their own existing schemas which must differ from those intended by


31

the speaker/author. Where different schemas are employed, the listener conducts a process of

reschematisation (or assigning the nearest possible schema that she or he has available in their

cognitive repertoire) to make sense of the text. This process can be viewed as following two main

steps:

1) Schema activation: Triggers, such as the linguistic elements of a text, will activate

pre-existing schemas to varying degrees. This personal process of interpretation is where

the listener determines what information “makes sense” and what does not. In other

words, schema activation takes place as the listener tries to discover in what way, if any, the

incoming information fits any existing schemas. Schema activation is followed by two more

stages when the individual is required to reproduce the text: (a) setting up cues for recall,

and (b) providing a framework for retelling.

2) Construction of reschematised text: The triggered schemas are reactivated and combined in

the process of interpreting the text and inform the reconstruction of the original idea units

into the student’s recalled text. Depending on the extent of the congruence of elements of

the original text to the student’s activated schema, the recall will be subject to:

• the addition, omission and perceived partial recalls of idea units

• the foregrounding or backgrounding of elements in the text

• the reordering of specific elements of the text.

The following section will elaborate and exemplify the notion of reschematisation as well as other

aspects of the recalls for each of the five narratives: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat;

The Story about Ping; Bushfire; Puss in Boots; and The Magic Colours.


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1. Main Findings

Text 1: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat

Summary of the story:

Rose, a widow, and her dog, John Brown, happily live together. They rely on each other for

company, but when a cat appears in the garden, John Brown refuses to acknowledge it. Rose,

however, is quite taken by the cat. Eventually Rose falls ill, and this distresses John Brown.

He reluctantly chooses to welcome the cat into the home to help Rose get better.

Out of all the narratives, this particular text elicited the broadest variety of interpretations among

Aboriginal students compared to non-Aboriginal students. The data for Aboriginal students

revealed a favouring of certain archetypal schemas, namely, a scary things schema (Malcolm &

Rochecouste, 2000) and a warning schema (Sharifian, 2008), both of which may be associated

with a sickness/death schema. These schemas are of high cultural importance to, and are ever

present for, many Aboriginal people. Consequently, for many students, these particular schemas

altered the interaction and the roles of the characters of the original text, ultimately leading to

reschematisations of the recalls.

Consider the possible role of a “dog” in a narrative. Figure 1 gives a possible illustration of how

the cultural conceptualisation of “dog” may differ between groups, remembering, of course, that

schemas are subject to individual interpretation and are dynamic and heterogeneously distributed

across individuals of a cultural group. The Venn diagram contains underlying proposition schemas:

those which may be shared (in the intersection), and those which may not. The diagram shows

that from a cross-cultural perspective, the word “dog” can generate common and competing

proposition schemas.


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Example cultural conceptualisations of “dog”

Proposition schema for non- Aboriginal conceptualisation

Proposition schema for Aboriginal conceptualisation

The dog can be owned by a family or individual

The dog can be owned by a family, individual or community

The dog eats when hungry

The dog is free to go where it pleases

The dog can sense/protect against spirits

The dog eats before we eat

Doesn’t like cats

The dog accompanies us in our daily activities

Protects the home from physical

dangers

The dog is taken for walks every day

The dog can sense/protect against burglars

Figure 1: Same word; different schemas

In respect to the text, John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, the fundamental cultural

conceptualisations that feature therein, for example, of “dog”, differed in relevance for both groups

(see Data Analysis: Appendix 2). For some Aboriginal students, the interplay of these conceptual

factors (such as the death, the dog, the fire and/or the cat) has brought about a reschematisation;

and so the fire, the dog and the cat become foregrounded in different ways to the way they were

intended by the original. For example, the Aboriginal reschematisation appears to have relied on

Aboriginal proposition schemas such as the following:

Propositionschemas Elaboration(maydifferforpeoplefromdifferentgroups)

FIRE PROTECTS YOU

FROM TORMENTING

SPIRITS

In the Aboriginal worldview, fire provides the light to keep

particular Beings, or “spirits” away, such as balyits1.

TORMENTING SPIRITS

CAUSE ILLNESS

Balyits can bring sickness to someone if, for example, they go into

culturally restricted areas.

Figure 2: Two Aboriginal proposition schemas

1 “Balyits” are spirits that are sometimes also referred to as “little people”. They can do “bad” things such as torment people in their sleep, steal children or bring sickness like “glue ear” (Bennell, 1993).


34

The reschematisation that attributes these roles to the fire, cat and dog may be elaborated as

follows:

• Role of “fire”: The fire has a range of strong, connotative spiritual meanings: it encourages

healing through its warmth [Fire as medicine] and it has a central place in yarning circles;

it wards off evil spirits; and protects children at night from being taken by evil sprits or

balyits [Fire as protector]. These aspects of alternative conceptualisations of fire can be

seen in the following examples: Extract 1:

Extract 1:

Dialogue

T OK Shanice, can you tell me the story of John Brown?

S He sat around the fire an … an at the end when he purred an stuff.

Extract 2:

Dialogue

S Then Rosie, Rose got sick … den she sat near the fire.

Being sick and sitting near the fire may have a logical relationship for Shanice. Recalls from

Aboriginal students were reschematised in such a way that Rose’s health (or sickness) is

foregrounded over the first complication in the original narrative – John Brown and Rose’s

opposing attitudes towards the cat.

These results of the relevance of roles were reinforced when the correct idea units

recalled were compared for each group. Generally, analysis showed Aboriginal students’

preponderance for recalling the death (at the beginning) and the fire (at the end).

Non-Aboriginal students showed a higher preponderance for recalling the section

where Rose falls ill, but also when John Brown asks if the cat will make her feel better

(see Figure 5).

• Role of “cat”: Cats are not as common as dogs in Aboriginal communities. They may not

be seen to be as useful as dogs and may represent the unknown. This cat comes at night,


35

when “scary things” happen. The eyes of the cat shining at night can be compared to the

eyes of evil spirits. It is possible that the cat is a spirit or is the bringer of bad news. These

attributes trigger a scary things schema.

The nature of John Brown’s character in this story is already (and perhaps intentionally) vague

as he shows both canine and human qualities – while he has a companion/caregiver role similar

to that of a western conceptualised dog, he is nevertheless humanised by a range of human-like

emotions: his reluctance to acknowledge the cat (denial), to accept the cat (fear) and to share

Rose’s affection with anyone/anything else (jealousy). These competing schemas (animal displaying

human behaviour vs. animal displaying animal behaviour) provide a tension that is a major theme

in the story from a possible western conceptualisation:

“We don’t need you, cat,” [John Brown] said. “We are all right, Rose and I.”

The personification of animals (anthropomorphism) is common in both Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal stories, but they are personified in different ways. The intent in the non-Aboriginal

worldview is to give the character more depth by using a metaphor with which most readers

will closely identify – human nature. However, there is an important variation in the Aboriginal

conceptualisation in that there is a (possibly unnamed) spiritual element that is present in the

environment, and this is consistent with common Aboriginal (Dreaming) “stories” where animals

play central roles. This variation may influence, albeit subtly, the conceptualisation of the animals

and therefore the understanding of the narrative, contributing to the reschematisation: John Brown

is a spiritual caregiver who has specific abilities (which are part of an Aboriginal “dog” schema),

possibly including being able to sense spirits and hunt kangaroos.


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Major schemas in reschematisations

Reschematisations occurred in the recalls of several Aboriginal students, and all were based

around similar schemas. Figure 3 summarises aspects of the original narrative and shows the

reschematised interpretations that these points may have inspired in these recalls. This comparison

indicates the overall difference in interpretations and reflects a general reschematisation of the

text.

Originalnarrativeprogression Generalreschematisation

• Rose lives with John Brown

• The death is an unmarked event

• John Brown doesn’t want anyone to

come between him and Rose

• There are 2, possibly more characters

(character descriptions such as the dog,

the ghost, someone else, use of other

names)

• The death is a marked event

• The dog protects Rose

• Cat wants milk

• Rose has a positive interest in the cat

• Cat annoys Rose

• Cat signifies a negative event

• Cat takes from Rose, without giving

anything back

• Rose falls ill

• Cat makes Rose better

• Cat makes Rose ill

• The fire makes Rose better

Resolution: unproblematic: positive

resolution and Rose, John Brown and the

cat are all together

Resolution: problematic: this is a scary story

and Rose may still be ill

Figure 3: General comparison of original and Aboriginal recall progressions of Text 1

The development of this reschematisation (right column, Figure 3) may stem from several verbal

elements that act as conceptual triggers such as died, he looked after her, he watched, fire, night,

cat (see Data Analysis: Appendix 2) that instantiate particular Aboriginal schemas.


37

These verbal elements are often present in the recalls and are foregrounded in some manner

(by repetition, for example). To examine the major schemas involved in the reschematisations, it is

necessary to consider what verbal elements have been added, omitted, distorted, foregrounded

and backgrounded. The following excerpt from Bobby (Year 4) highlights these verbal elements

and exemplifies the impact of different cultural conceptualisations, evident in the high degree of

“distortion” in respect to the original narrative:

Extract 3:

Dialogue

T Right, Bobby can you tell me the story please?

B Um, there’s man and a cat and uh other person [addition] … the people [distortion]

keep feeding the cat [distortion] an de cat was warning them [addition] … something

I think then um the man [distortion] … think there was a ghost [addition] an they’re

saying that they don’t need the cat [distortion] an then the person said … they, they

give im milk an then the ghost [addition] … I think he was tipped the bowl out, an

then keeps givin milk … an tips the bowl out again … an then um he wasted the milk

[addition] … I think the cat died [distortion].

Arguably the presence of the main character of the original text, Rose, has now been

backgrounded in Extract 3. The cat is now the main actor who interacts with “people”, the man and

then the ghost. Bobby’s foregrounding of the role of the cat represents just one element of the

reschematisation of the text.

Warning schema

The role of the cat is strengthened by the cat’s association with another evoked schema. Its

presence and behaviour (namely its insistence on engaging with the characters or “humbuggin”

them) as well as other elements such as “midnight”, have appeared to trigger a warning schema

(Sharifian, 2008). Here, Bobby has associated the cat with a warning sign; and there is a causal

relationship between the appearance of the cat and a negative event (being shot or arrested, and

death). Consider another extract from Bobby’s recall:


38

Extract 4:

Line Dialogue

33 T OK, when you in the beginning, you said that you thought the cat was

warning them, what do you think the cat was warning them about?

34 B Um, that they're gonna … die (whispers)

35 T Oh really? Because of something, or? What do you mean, “the cat was

warning them they were going to die”?

36 B They might get shot, or get arrested.

37 T Oh, why do you think that might happen in that story?

38 B Coz the cat came to them.

The teacher presses for a satisfactory response. First, Bobby reacts to the question in line 34 by

whispering his response. This could indicate a reluctance to speak due to the prevalent cultural

schema associated with death. Bobby may not want to share what may be culturally restricted

knowledge, and so does not want to say too much. He continues by relating the warning to a

possible traumatic event (not present in the original narrative) (line 36). He then reverts to his

literal interpretation of the cat’s presence (line 38). Finally, he remains silent (line 40, Extract 5).

He is unable to discern exactly why the cat intends to warn the other characters in the story.

“Unclarity” in communication

“Unclarity” is used to reflect the non-sharing of schemas which lead to a degree of communication

breakdown that may not be apparent to either the teacher or student.

When a misunderstanding is made apparent in some way, either explicitly or implicitly (such

as through extended questioning for clarification), then there is a risk that the student will see

themselves at fault for not understanding, and indeed the teacher may hold the same opinion.

In Extract 4 the teacher tries to understand an element of the recall and the student tries to

respond. Bobby may not only be unable to justify his answer (in other words, he is unable to


39

explicitly identify the schema), but he may also in fact be uncomfortable with responding as it may

be culturally inappropriate to talk about the death event.

For the student this text clearly makes sense. From a non-Aboriginal perspective, however, the

teacher’s confusion may seem justified: no such relationship appears to be implied (either lexically

or conceptually), nor is there a mention of any such negative events. Unsatisfied with the answer,

the teacher presses Bobby for a more satisfying explanation:

Extract 5:

Line Dialogue

39 T Right, but why? Why was the cat warning them that that might happen?

Why do you think that was going to happen, might happen, in the story?

Was there something in the story that made you think that was going to

happen?

40 B Em … [silence]

41 T No? It’s just what you thought? OK, anything else you wanna say about the

story?

42 B No.

The teacher is struggling to understand how Bobby could have associated death and ghosts with

the story: the lack of explicit associations (at the lexico-syntactic level: for example, additions, such

as being shot) or implicit associations (at the conceptual level, since the teacher does not share

this warning schema with the student) cause a considerable degree of confusion in the teacher’s

understanding of the student’s interpretation. In addition, in extracts two and three, a certain

unclarity in communication is evidenced by a condensed period of questioning: seven questions

out of seven utterances over just four turns. This high rate of unidirectional questioning inhibits the

discursive power of the student and limits the student’s response time. Consequently, the student,

albeit unintentionally, is silenced.


40

After insistent questioning by the teacher, Bobby chooses not to continue the discussion.

The schema(s) evoked up to this point have caused Bobby some discomfort – his shorter responses

and increasing silence show that he is clearly reluctant to continue to engage with either the

schema or the teacher. Initially he is satisfied with his interpretation, which he delivers fluidly and

with few pauses since, to him, it makes sense. He only falters when he is asked to justify specific

elements of his recall. For him, the associations between the evoked schemas do not have to be

made explicit in the recall as he may assume that the teacher shares these conceptualisations with

him. In Extract 4, for example, Bobby does not feel the need to explain the association between the

signal (the cat) and the outcome (getting shot) (lines 36–38).

Being pressed to give a justification may also make Bobby question how his answer is being

interpreted. The reschematisation may have led to the apparent omission in Bobby’s recall of one

of the main complications in the original story – Rose’s sickness. However, the sickness would be

implicitly present within the evoked schema and therefore would not need to be made explicit in

the recall (given the hearer is believed, at least initially, to share the same schema).

In terms of idea units, Bobby produces a long recall relative to other students. However, there is

a high degree of omission in Bobby’s recall in respect to the original narrative. Most of Bobby’s

main recall (10 out of 14 idea units) can be classed as additions, and only 4%1 of the original idea

units are recalled. These additions are by-products of the reschematisation of the narrative. The

remaining four idea units, however, could be classed as partial recalls.

Scary things and fire schemas

Rose’s sickness was the most salient feature (the most recalled idea unit) in the recalls of both

groups. For non-Aboriginal students, the sickness tended to be mentioned towards the end of the

recall as a prelude to the dog accepting the cat in order to make Rose feel better (as is consistent

with the original narrative). In many of the Aboriginal students’ recalls, however, the sickness was

positioned at the beginning of the recall. For example, Tisha goes straight to Rose’s sickness:

1 The percentage of idea unit recall is calculated by comparing the correct and partial recalls with the total number of idea units in the original. The figure is only a rough indication of a successful recall as post-interview discussion about the recall, which could generate more recall, is not included in this figure.


41

Extract 6:

Dialogue

T OK Tisha, can you tell me the story please?

S Um, the woman got sick … an the dog think … all afternoon … after dinner she grabbed

a feed … told the dog … to ope’ the door for the cat … an she went near the fire … an

the cat sat beside er an (long pause) … the en’.

Tisha produces a minimal recall leaving little surface evidence of a deep interpretation. The

extent of her understanding and how much Tisha omits from her recall is only revealed during the

questioning session (Extract 7).

Extract 7:

Line Dialogue

17 T You did like it? What did you like about it?

18 S The … where she sits by the fire.

19 T Where she … ?

20 S … sits by the fire.

21 T Oh OK, why did you like that bit? You like sitting by a fire? Maybe that's why.

Was there anything you didn't like in the story?

22 S Where the cat sat on that um window.

23 T Why didn't you like that bit?

24 S Scared.

25 T You were scared? Does that make you scared?

26 S Little.

27 T Why's that? You don't know? OK.

28 T When you think back on the whole story, what was the most important part

of the story for you?

29 S Um, her husband died.

30 S An’ when her … and the dog was living.


42

The further questioning reveals that the recall may be relying on multiple and inter-related cultural

conceptualisations.

• Evidence of the fire schema [Fire as protector] is shown in Tisha being comforted by the fire

(line 18).

• The cat evokes the scary schema (lines 22–26) because of the reference, in the original text,

to its eyes “were like lamps”. This may have impacted on her lack of engagement with the

teacher’s question asking for clarification (line 27) where she is either unable (due to lack of

desire), and/or possibly not given due opportunity (lack of time), to elaborate on her fear

(line 27).

• Lines 28–30 can be interpreted as the dog is living and looks after Rose, replacing the

husband. As mentioned before, the dog has adopted the role of protector, consistent with

the Aboriginal conceptualisation of dog. She has omitted these two most important factors

from her main recall, potentially suggesting that their presence had always been implicit in

the activated schemas.

• Tisha could see the final scene where all are united around the fire as related to an

Aboriginal family/community schema.

As with all recalls, further (possibly open) questions could have been asked to clarify the

interpretation, such as: What’s going to happen to the lady? Can the cat make her sick? Why

don’t you like the cat? However, there is nevertheless evidence to show that Tisha is relying on

alternative schemas to those possibly intended by the author to interpret the text. This text is

therefore an example of reschematisation.

The salient features here are the sickness, the fire and the cat – all elements of scary things and

fire schemas. These conceptual actors are also present in Bobby’s recall; however, they interact

differently.

The fire schema

The fire represents a positive image for many of the Aboriginal students (see Bushfire text analysis

below): it protects as it keeps people warm, wards off evil spirits and can heal people. In the


43

following example, Eddie, another Aboriginal student (Year 4), makes an association between

Rose’s sickness and the healing powers of the fire. Rose and the midnight cat are both mentioned

five times, but John Brown only twice. According to Eddie, John Brown has died, but still manages

to tip the milk out possibly implying he is there as a spirit presence.

Extract 8:

Dialogue

T OK Eddie, can you tell me the story of John Brown?

E John Brown died … An there was a midnight cat … An (pause) Rose went … en put

milk outside for the midnight cat … An John Brown tipped it out … An that she (?) den

midnight cat jumped up onto her window an … An then jumped onto the couches (pause)

… then Rosie, Rose got sick … Den she sat near the fire … an the midnight cat sat on that

chair (pause).

This extract is now contrasted below with the original. Though both texts are clearly lexically

similar, it would seem that Eddie’s interpretation has been reschematised to some extent. Rose’s

sitting by the fire is in line with the activated schemas (sickness/death), because she needs to get

better. She can see the cat and can keep a safe distance from it.

Original Recall

Then Rose got up

(Rose has recovered)

and sat by the fire for a while.

(Habitual act: Rose usually sits by the fire in

the evening.)

Then Rosie, Rose got sick …

(Rose needs to get better)

den she sat near the fire …

(Intentional act: Rose is by the fire to get

better. Time is not marked.)

And the midnight cat sat

on the arm of the chair …

(Everyone lives happily together. Story

concluded.)

An the midnight cat sat

on that chair … [End of recall]

(Rose is still sick. The cat is on a particular

chair, possibly distanced from Rose, who

is with John Brown and the fire, and is

therefore safe. Story continues.)

Figure 4


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Comparisonofcorrectlyandpartiallyrecalledideaunits

The correctly or partially recalled idea units for the two groups (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal

students) were mapped against the original idea units (see Figure 5). This measure shows what

was or was not recalled. An average percentage of correctly and partially recalled idea units was

calculated and compared across the groups as the number of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal

students was different. While the sample size is small, clear patterns have emerged that confirm

the conceptual findings above and show a different perspective on the differences in recalls.

Consider the first idea unit (out of 108) of the original text:

Rose’s husband died a long time ago.

This idea unit was recalled by 68% of Aboriginal students and 50% of non-Aboriginal students.

The 18% difference indicates that this particular idea unit was recalled by relatively more Aboriginal

students than non-Aboriginal students. From this it may be deduced that this idea unit was more

relevant to the Aboriginal group in general.

Aboriginal Non-Aboriginal

1: mentioning of death17: more Ab’l students recalldialogue b/t Rose and JB

60: “we don’t need you cat”

105: sat by the �re

2: she lived with her dog

2: we don’t need you cat

2: when JB wasn’t looking

103: the cat came in (many Aboriginal students recall “cat sat on chair” but not “cat came in”

30.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%20.0% 20.0%10.0% 10.0%0.0%

1: mentioning of death

Figure 5: Graph showing the difference of recall for each idea unit for each group

Figure 5 shows the differences for the entire narrative. The vertical axis (y) represents the idea

units from 1 (first) to 108 (last). This comparison indicates that certain idea units and groups of


45

idea units are more salient than others for each group. Figure 6 summarises the groups of idea

units that were most salient for each group. Overall, the differences in percentages that were

greater than or equal to 15% between the groups were:

Aboriginal group Non-Aboriginal group

The death of the husband Rose lived with a dog

Something in the bushes/garden Filling the milk bowl/tipping it out exchange

between John Brown and Rose

Rose becoming sick Rose becoming sick

John Brown’s confrontation with the cat

“we don’t need you, cat”

John Brown not getting his breakfast

Sitting by the fire John Brown letting the cat in

Figure 6: Summary of most salient areas of text for each group

While this particular method of comparative analysis can give a broad indication of what students

in both groups tended to correctly/partially recall and omit, comparison of the groups can also

mask certain findings and a more nuanced understanding. Since it only looks at differences and

present or absent idea units, the comparison will not reveal, for example:

1. If both groups omitted an idea unit. For example, neither group mentioned: “Then she

wound up the clock and took the milk bottles out.” (idea units 49 and 50).

2. If both groups correctly recalled an idea unit. For example, 75% of Aboriginal students

recalled the sickness versus 90% of non-Aboriginal students. The 15% difference does not

show that this idea unit was the most recalled of all the recalls for both groups.

3. The order in which the idea units were recalled.


46

4. Any syntactic or conceptual foregrounding/backgrounding.

5. Any additions and distortions, which tend to make the different conceptualisations more

noticeable.

Text 2: The Story about Ping


Ping is a duck who lives on a boat with his very large family and their master. Every day, Ping

and his relatives would be marched off the boat to look for food. The last duck to get back on

the boat at the end of the day would get a spank from the Master. One day, knowing he was

late and for fear of getting spanked, Ping hid from the Master. Ping ends up losing his boat

and goes to look for it. He comes across other boats and at one point is caught by a young

boy. The boy’s family want to eat Ping for dinner, so he lets Ping free. Ping eventually finds his

family and Master. He gets a spank for being the last one to board the boat, but is happy to

be reunited with his family.

This text provided important instantiations of family schema, evident in the way Aboriginal

students and non-Aboriginal students recalled the family members.

A comparison of the responses (see Appendix 3) from students when recalling the family element

of this particular narrative revealed two distinct patterns (see Figure 7).


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Family schema

The original order of family members (i.e. mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles,

cousins) was generally reflected in all of the non-Aboriginal students’ recalls. Aboriginal students,

on the other hand, mostly recalled the family in a different order: aunts (aunies) or cousins, then

uncles. Sisters, brothers and sometimes mother and father were mentioned less often.

The Aboriginal cultural category of the primary family unit spreads beyond that of a nuclear

unit to include the so-called “extended family” (Sharifian, 2011, p. 16). Two different cultural

conceptualisations emerge from the data: one where the mother, father and siblings form part of a

core group, conceptually distanced from the cousins, aunts and uncles; the other more of a holistic

conceptualisation focused around cousins and aunties (Appendix 3).

Non-Aboriginal students

mum/dad

brother/sister

Aboriginal students

uncles

sisters

aunts

dad

brothers

cousins

mum

cousins

Figure 7: Comparison of conceptualisations of family

As noted in by Collard (2011, personal communication), “family is crucial. It’s central to our lives”.

The extent of the importance of family was explicitly mentioned by some Aboriginal students as

being the reason why they liked the story:


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Extract 9:

Dialogue

Teacher: Did you like it, the story? What did you like, which was your best bit?

Maliesha: Um, when Ping found is family.

Extract 10:

Dialogue

Teacher: What was nice about it?

Mitch: Well, I didn’t like the bit about where he had to get smacked when you go

across the bridge, but he had lotsa cousins and I liked the bit where all the

cousins are at the beach [addition] tryin’ ta find food [distortion].

Teacher: What did you think of the story? Did you like it? [Freddy nods] What did you

like about it?

Freddy: … the boat …

Teacher: What did you like about the boat?

Freddy: … and the cousins.

While the foregrounding of the family element may be expected, it is nevertheless an example of

the impact of cultural conceptualisations on language use.


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Text 3: Bushfire


Two children reluctantly go to school as a storm is picking up. The wind is getting stronger,

dogs are barking and the birds seem to have disappeared. The mother of the children hears

sirens and realises that a bushfire has started. People are asked to evacuate and the mother

goes to the school to pick up her children. They take some belongings and the cat, and escape

the encroaching fire which is engulfing houses and causing animals to flee. After a few days,

the whole family return to what was once their cabin. They sift through charred remains.

The mother (who is pregnant) at one point releases an emotional cry, scaring the children.

The family start to retrieve certain objects, including a toy fire truck that has been untouched

by the fire, and a camera. Upon finding these items, the father happily takes photos of the

mother and their children holding the truck.

This particular text relied heavily on poetic devices such as alliteration, metaphor, metre and

rhyme; and so there was relatively little literal information in the text. In terms of omissions of

idea units, the figurative language was shown to be largely not recalled. Instead, students tended

to recall the literal sections of the text – mainly direct speech and utterances regarding physical

objects (motorbike, fire engine, car and classroom).

Some differences in the recall of these objects were noted. For example, non-Aboriginal students

recalled “Christmas present” and Aboriginal students just recalled a “present”. This non-distinction

may reflect different perceptions of the concept of a present, such as the act of giving or receiving

something being more culturally relevant than the occasion, such as Christmas in this case.

Key observations made from the recalls of this text were the instantiation of spirit and fire

schemas.


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Spirit schema

One Aboriginal student made the following recall.

“An’ the dad was on the other side. An’ the two kids was on the other side. An’ the mum, in her

dress, there was a baby … And … an’ then the spirit went up in the air …”

One marked element in this extract, from a non-Aboriginal perspective, is the addition of spirit. It is

possible that various elements of the story have combined to trigger a range of schemas. Figure 8

shows how different elements of the text have combined to generate a spirit schema.

In Figure 8, extracts one to four evoke the image of a dust storm, or a “wirli-wirli” as known to

Nyungar people (and others), and this has spiritual implications. This, along with text extract 5 in

Figure 8, could explain the addition of “spirit” to the recall.

Spirit schema

5. Creature in pain, circled the air, unhappy song flew up

high, echoes, carrying message to world of beyond, baby

2. Nowhere on earth or up in the sky was

the call of a single bird

4. Sheets of iron bent, buckled around stumps

1. Trees bent boughs, tossed leaves. Dogs

yowled hard

3. “The wind’s making me cough.” Wind had

thrown her voice away

wirli-wirli

Spirit

Figure 8: Possible development of the spirit schema


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In Figure 8, extracts one to four evoke the image of a dust storm, or a “wirli-wirli” as known to

Nyungar people (and others), and this has spiritual implications. This, along with the text extract 5

in Figure 8, could explain the addition of “spirit” to the recall.

The wirli-wirli is associated with spirits. “Sometimes they are angry. If the wirli-wirli goes one

way, it’s OK. If it goes the other way, it can take people or children away. This is a common

story for children.” (Glenys Collard)

Fire schema

Competing conceptualisations of fire (see John Brown analysis) are evidenced later in the recall

when the student (G) is being asked some post-recall questions by the teacher.

Extract 11:

Line Dialogue

31 T … what sort of a fire was it then?

32 G A bushfire … An' the fire missed one thing was the truck … big fire truck An'

yeah. That's all.

33 T OK. And did you like the story? Or did you not like the story?

34 G Sord'of.

35 T What did you like about the story?

36 G There was fire.

37 T You like fires, do you? Bushfires?

38 G No.

Here the teacher associates G’s response (“fire”) as meaning “bushfire”. This could be perceived

as a logical conclusion on the part of the teacher, as G, in line 32, recognises the nature of the fire

being a “bushfire”, that living things need to flee “so they don’t die”. However, regardless of the


52

narrative he has just recalled and the intended line of questioning of the teacher (about Bushfire),

he responds with his base conceptualisation of fire (line 36) that seems to override the context.

“There was fire” signifies something that is not harmful or destructive; rather, it is a source of

warmth and safety. He clarifies:

34. Teacher: What sort of fire do you like?

35. G: Fire what keep me warm.

Text 4: Puss in Boots


A poor miller dies leaving his youngest son a cat. The son likes the cat, but is not sure how

he can make his fortune from it. This special cat comforts his master and asks that he simply

get him a large bag and a pair of boots. The cat then proceeds to make his master a fortune

by making the king believe the master is a land and castle owner – the Marquis of Carabas.

Thanks to Puss in Boots’ ingenuity, the king becomes impressed with the master. As a result,

he makes him a prince and allows him to marry the princess. The prince and princess live

happily ever after and the cat lives in material comfort for the rest of his days, not having to

ever hunt for mice again.

The character Puss in Boots was familiar to many students because of the popular animated movie

Shrek2. Students from both groups often commented on the story being “a little bit like Shrek”, or

words to that effect. Here, the students are explicitly mentioning a schema they have accessed to

make sense of the story and this will have partially reschematised the story for those students.

Signs of other factors, including schemas, influencing the recalls were evident.

2 Shrek is a film series based on the picture book by William Steig and produced by DreamWorks Animation.


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Bereavement schema

“[Death] in our world – it is normal. Every day you would hear of someone pass away.”

(Glenys Collard)

An Aboriginal bereavement schema may have a strong influence on cultural conceptualisations as

death is ever-present in the lives of many Aboriginal people and is a major cultural event. It entails

a set of experiences, and therefore schemas, which may involve the enactment of particular roles

within the family and cultural “obligations”3; travelling large distances; time away from school

and/or country; seeing family; and bereavement. The death itself, of course, is a sad event.

In Puss in Boots, the two deaths that take place result in positive consequences: the death of the

father leads to an inheritance for the three sons; and the death of the ogre leads to a castle and

land for the prince and princess (and Puss in Boots) to live in.

Earnie, like many other Aboriginal people, has experienced the passing of many family members

through his life. Just before the research project, a member of Earnie’s family had indeed passed

away. In his recall of this text, the deaths seem to have instantiated a death or bereavement

schema which may have impacted on his recall in the following ways:

• [Death] is mentioned five times in 10 turns.

• Earnie has reinterpreted the story by saying that the master had drowned when in the

original, the text says:

Original text: Puss ran out, shouting, “Help! Help! The Marquis of Carabas is drowning!”

The King ordered the coach to stop and sent his servants to rescue Marquis.

3 “Obligations” is used here within the context of a role. It is not meant to imply any emotions that may be associated with the notion of “obligation” such as apathy, reluctance or compulsion to do something.


54

• The overall impression of the story was mainly sad:

Extract 12:

Dialogue

Teacher: What did you think of the story?

Earnie: It was sad.

Teacher: Why was it sad?

Earnie: Because Puss in Boots’ master died [Distortion]. He drowned [Distortion].

This is another example of reschematisation as depicted in Figure 9.

Bereavement schema

‘death’ referred to 5 times in 9 speech

acts/turns of conversation

Reschematisation

Death is a happy event

Death is a sad event

Father’s death

Inheritance

Ogre’s death

Castle and land

Original story

Earnie’s recall

Figure 9: Reschematisation in Earnie’s recall

The importance of this schema may have led to the foregrounding of death and the backgrounding

of other elements in the story, such as the hunting section. However, it must be noted that evoking


55

a bereavement schema will clearly impact upon any student. Based on this limited evidence, the

aim here is to merely show how that impact could happen, rather than this being a particular

cultural conceptualisation.

Cultural focus of the text or a hunting schema?

Not everything in the students’ recalls will be evidence of the influence of schemas or an Aboriginal

English discourse pattern. The cultural focus of a text may also resonate with the student, bearing

on what she or he recalls. In other words, a recall might be structured by a cultural connection

made between the narrative, or a section of it, and a particular cultural act or event that is familiar

to the student.

In Puss in Boots, there was a preponderance of Aboriginal over non-Aboriginal students to

include the hunting section in their recall. This possibly reflects the fact that the capture of prey

is for Aboriginal students an area of cultural focus, rather than representing the influence of an

Aboriginal hunting schema.

Rochecouste and Malcolm (2000, p. 17) note that the key features of the hunting schema are that

it:

… relates experience with respect to the observation, pursuit and capture of prey. There is

usually initial orientation of the time and/or place of the hunting event and observation. The

discourse then contains elements of pursuit and capture. Pursuit often reflects persistence with

repeated and/or unsuccessful actions (e.g. shoot and miss, look for and never find). Success of

the hunt is reflected in killing and bringing the kill home, and sometimes cooking and eating it.

The original story in Puss in Boots entails observation (finding the rabbit hole), setting a trap

(“She put the bag down with its mouth wide open”), capture (“and swiftly drew the strings of the

bag together and the fat rabbit was caught”) and resumption of travel (“Then Puss slung the bag

over her shoulder and set off in her yellow boots”). While there are some elements here that are

common to the hunting schema, important elements are missing (pursuit, persistence, cooking and

eating the prey).

Derek – an Aboriginal student – produced a reduced recall that mainly featured this particular

section of the text.


56

Extract 13:

Line Dialogue

1 D Um, once there was Puss in Boots (orientation)

2 and the there was a girl (orientation)

3 and she wanted yellow boots (orientation)

4 an’ she got it (capture)

5 an’ then she said to someone (orientation)

6 she wanted a bag of lettuce (orientation)

7 an’ then she got it (capture)

8 an’ then she went to a rabbit hole (moving on)

9 an’ then she put it in its hole (setting a trap)

10 an’ she went behind a tree (moving on)

11 an’ then a rabbit popped its head out (setting a trap)

12 an’ then it went in the bag

13 an’ then the string

14 an’ then he tied it up (capture)

15 an’ he caught it (capture)

16 an’ then he took it … she took it to the king (moving on)

There is little evidence of Derek drawing on a hunting schema to modify the original. He has

faithfully reproduced the elements of setting the trap and capture, which were in the original.

However, he has reduced the elements of observation and resumption of travel, and has not

introduced any of the elements of pursuit, persistence, cooking or eating which might have been

further evidence of the influence of the hunting schema. There is, however, some evidence of a

tendency to alternate moving and stopping elements, as is typical of the travel schema.


57

It would appear that the common interest in capture has helped the Aboriginal child to focus on

that element in the story and to recall it well. This is reinforced by the child’s response when asked

what he liked about the story:

Teacher: What was good about it?

Derek: I liked um when the when the Puss um caught the rabbit (i.e. capture).

Text 5: Magic Colours


Long ago, all the birds were black. One evening, the black dove gets a splinter in his foot.

He calls for help and all the other birds come to help, all except for the crow who was upset

for being disturbed by the birds. Crow tried to scare them off, but the birds remained with

their friend, the black dove, whose foot is now quite swollen because of the splinter. The

galah thinks to burst the wound to help the dove, and a fountain of colours comes out,

splashing all the birds giving them their colours. The dove turned white, but the crow did not

get splashed by the colours because he had not stayed near the dove to help him.

Many students had already encountered this text. “Correct recalls” – recalled idea units that

matched those of the original narrative – were mainly recorded with little in the way of additions,

distortions and omission.


58

2.Otherfindings:

2.1 Length of recalls

The findings reveal a great deal of conceptual diversity and cultural depth in the recalls of the

Aboriginal students. However, it was found that Aboriginal students tended to give shorter

recalls than the non-Aboriginal students. This was evident in the number of idea units that were

omitted from recalls, and was particularly noticeable in sections of Puss in Boots and The Story

about Ping. This finding raises questions, particularly if descriptive language in story telling

(such as in News Telling sessions, production of and responding to narratives) is highly valued

in the classroom. It was clear from several recalls that Aboriginal students reserved information

that was only revealed during the post-recall questioning. In other words, they were selective

in their recalls. Alternatively, as seen in the case with Bobby, “unclarity” in triggered schemas

between an Aboriginal student and the non-Aboriginal teacher can lead to a mild breakdown in

communication, thereby limiting an oral recall.

Whatever the reasons, it is clear that there is a range of factors that would need to be considered

before drawing conclusions from the shorter recalls that the students suffered from some kind of

deficit.


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“Our kids get their understanding from the whole text, not just

individual words. They have this worldview and knowledge that they

can’t help but use in their understanding and interpreting of stories

and texts. So their understanding of texts means different things as

they bring to it their worldview. Our kids are often labelled as shy

or that they won’t take a risk, but in fact they are trying to interpret

or formulate the most acceptable response which in a classroom

situation is a western perspective. As they formulate their response,

they endeavour to take out of it the innate cultural interpretation

so that ultimately they won’t be shamed or embarrassed by teachers

who are ignorant to our (cultural) worldview.

Our kids know a lot, but over time they learn to filter out what

knowledge they can share and what knowledge to keep to themselves

because they know that some knowledge is not acceptable or

can be misunderstood by some non-Aboriginal people. For many,

success in the classroom requires that an enormous amount of this

worldview is not brought out, because only the western worldview

is acknowledged. We need to foster that Aboriginal knowledge or

worldview of the children by making sure our teachers have the

cultural competencies for teaching children across a diversity of

cultural backgrounds. This will benefit all children in the classroom

and assist in bridging the gap in Aboriginal education.”

Carol Garlett

Chairperson WAAETC

Western Australian Aboriginal Education & Training Council


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I. Thefindingsoftheresearchandsuggestedapplications

• Reschematisation

• Applications of reschematisation

II.Widerimplicationsofthisstudy

a. Implications of this study for the linguistic understanding of Aboriginal English and

bidialectalism

b. Implications of Aboriginal English Research for education of Aboriginal-English speaking

students in Standard Australian English literacy

1. Public policy

2. Cross-cultural communication: dialect difference and its significance

3. Valuing the dialect of the student: the foundation of two-way bidialectal education

c. Two-way bidialectal education: how to do it

1) Planning and curriculum development

1.1. Identifying Aboriginal English speakers

1.2. Developing a bidialectal curriculum

• Priming the activity

• Explicit teaching

• Providing opportunities to practise code switching

• Developing materials

• Clear purpose for learning activities

• Evaluating, selecting and interpreting texts

2) Implementing the teaching and language program

2.1. Setting up bidialectal communication activities


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2.2. How to promote SAE competence through scaffolding

2.3. How to exploit culturally inclusive and exclusive texts

2.4. How to give appropriate feedback

2.5. Assessment

III. Summary and conclusion

I. THE FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH AND SUGGESTED APPLICATIONS

This research was undertaken to investigate the degree to which students who are speakers of

Aboriginal English (mis)understand literacy materials (p. 3) and to further explore the already

known impact of the use of the students’ dialect on their educational outcomes (p. 5). The research

employed for the first time a methodology that systematically analysed the way in which Aboriginal

students interpreted the kinds of materials which are used in schools to promote literacy, and it

showed how the concept of the schema could be employed as an analytical tool to this end (pp. 12,

16).

While it cannot be claimed on the basis of the sampling of the student population and of the

literacy texts included that the findings of the study are generalisable to all contexts where

Aboriginal students are being instructed in literacy, the study does throw new light on Aboriginal

students’ classroom performance and educational outcomes. In particular, the study provides

evidence of the process of reschematisation underlying students’ responses to texts in Standard

Australian English (SAE), and it traces the effects of reschematisation on learner behaviour and,

consequently, on teacher response.

This section of the report will expand on what the study shows us about reschematisation and on

how this may be immediately applied in educational practice. It will be followed by a section that

considers the way in which the research complements existing findings on Aboriginal English and

its educational implications.


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Reschematisation

The study has enabled reschematisation to be viewed both as a process by which

Aboriginal-English speaking students deal with the educational materials they are confronted with,

and as a product whereby the students produce an alternative reading of what has been presented

to them. The research has documented, across a number of students, the way in which schemas

are activated on the basis of the verbal elements which trigger them (p. 36), and it has shown the

way in which students may draw on the schemas to which they have access in order to construct

a reschematised text (p. 37). The findings support the view that schemas are not so much “ready

made” as negotiated by each person who uses them (pp. 12, 16), and, indeed, often overlapping,

and that it is therefore not possible to generalise too broadly the ways in which reschematisation

will occur. It also supports the view that cultural schemas are not uniformly represented in a

cultural group, but have heterogeneously distributed representation (p. 14) meaning different

Aboriginal students may be influenced by different schemas and in different ways.

Applicationsofreschematisation

What this study reveals about reschematisation may be applied in at least the following ways:

1. The fact of reschematisation reinforces the view that education, where it involves

Aboriginal students, is inevitably a cross-cultural process. Whether or not the teacher

recognises it, cultural knowledge not shared with the teacher is being drawn on by students

to interpret the learning experiences to which they are being exposed. Unless teachers take

account of this, they will have a limited understanding of the students and their potential.

This will affect the teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

2. The process of reschematisation that this research has enabled us to trace provides

educators with new insight into the role of the learner. The learner is an active participant

in the learning process, working from an existing conceptual base to gain an understanding

of the new material to which he/she is exposed. Teachers need to be aware of the

interpretive process underlying students’ responses and avoid judging bidialectal students’

interpretations on the basis of SAE schemas.


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3. The interface between two dialects, each of which triggers different schemas in response

to the same linguistic forms, leads to communicative unclarity (p. 38), which affects both

student and teacher behaviour. Students may experience discomfort where cultural

inhibitions are evoked by terms which, on the basis of SAE interpretation, have no particular

loading. Teachers, on the other hand, may be confused when students seem to miss the

point of what they are saying.

4. It follows from this that student reluctance to respond (which is frequently frustrating for

teachers when managing classroom discourse) may be related to the fact that the student

is responding to cultural schemas evoked by the material being discussed (p. 39). Where

teachers are in doubt as to whether or not this is the case, it is best not to press the student

to respond.

5. This research, and the project which preceded it, enables us to see the reciprocal nature of

reschematisation. This project has shown the way in which texts introduced by the teacher

may be reschematised by Aboriginal students, while the previous project showed how

Aboriginal English discourse could be reschematised by non-Aboriginal teachers. Teachers

need to be aware of reciprocal reschematisation and be in constant communication, where

possible, with Aboriginal Islander Education Officers or other Aboriginal people able to

assist, to anticipate it and ensure miscommunication does not occur.

6. One effect of the research has been to focus on reschematisation as a product rather

than (as originally anticipated) as something to be conceived of in deficit terms

(e.g. “distortion”). Rather than treating students’ reschematisations of SAE texts as evidence

of failure to learn, teachers can see them as evidence of alternative readings which can be

explored in their own right as a part of culturally inclusive education.

7. This research suggests that teachers cannot assume that the conceptual implications of

texts they use in the classroom (including texts claiming to have Indigenous subject matter)

are unproblematic. Teachers need to develop ways of questioning texts with students which

will enable cross-cultural interpretations to emerge and be recognised. At the same time,

teachers need to recognise the need to make explicit the SAE schemas which are assumed

by the texts they use. What is called for is a cross-cultural critical literacy.


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II. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY

a) ImplicationsofthisstudyforthelinguisticunderstandingofAboriginalEnglishand

bidialectalism

Aboriginal English has been the subject of linguistic investigation for some fifty years and the

understanding of its status as a dialect, and its relationship to Australia’s other major dialects –

SAE (in its formal and colloquial stylistic variants) and Australian Vernacular English – has grown

progressively. We have moved from a narrowly linguistic understanding of the dialect to an

increasingly social, cultural and conceptual understanding, and as we have done so, the complexity

of the relationship between Aboriginal English and SAE has become clearer.

Language is at the same time a physical phenomenon (sounds in space and written symbols on real

or virtual background), a social phenomenon (speech acts exchanged in contexts of use, identifying

different events and different groups and relationships of speakers), a historical phenomenon

(an inheritance passed on within the context of a group with a more or less uniquely shared

history), and a cultural/conceptual phenomenon (a tool to make it possible for communication on

the basis of shared assumptions about reality). The present study is a step forward in the ongoing

study of Aboriginal English, relating, in particular, to the fourth area of inquiry. The following table

attempts to show how it relates to the whole picture, in particular as it has emerged from Western

Australian research.


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Dimension of language Object/sofresearch Some sources

PHYSICAL Pronunciation

Vocabulary

Grammar

Distribution across WA

Acquisition

Malcolm 2004

Malcolm & Sharifian 2007

Kaldor & Malcolm 1979, 1991

Eagleson, Kaldor, & Malcolm 1982

SOCIAL Use in interaction

Use in classroom discourse

Use in oral narrative

Malcolm 1996

Grote 2004

Malcolm & Grote 2007


Malcolm 1979, 1982

Rochecouste & Malcolm 2000

HISTORICAL Use by youth

Dialect selection

principles

Process of development

Development and relation to pidgins & creoles

Malcolm 2001a

Malcolm 1994a

Sharifian & Malcolm 2003

Malcolm et al. 2002

Malcolm 1997

Malcolm & Koscielecki 1997

CULTURAL/CONCEPTUAL

Schemas

Categories

Metaphor

Malcolm 2000

Sharifian 2005

Sharifian 2008

Malcolm 2011

Sharifian 2008

Sharifian 2002a

Sharifian 2001

Sharifian 2006

Sharifian 2010


Malcolm 2002a

Table 4: Aboriginal English research in WA: a selective overview


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b) ImplicationsofAboriginalEnglishresearchinWAfortheeducationofAboriginal-English

speaking students in SAE literacy

1. Public policy

The Melbourne Declaration states that “literacy and

numeracy and knowledge of key disciplines remain

the cornerstone of schooling for young Australians”

(MCEETYA, 2008). In respect to Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander education in particular, there is a

need “to improve SAE (Standard Australian English)

literacy and numeracy outcomes by supporting

the use and development of pedagogies that are

sensitive to and engage with Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander students’ languages and cultures” (MCEECDYA, 2010, p. 14).

There is, then, recognition that the reality that Aboriginal students face in classrooms is influenced

by the interaction between their own cultures and that of the school, and that cross-cultural

teaching and learning programs need to be responsive to these students by addressing this

interaction. This means curriculum learning areas need to be inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander perspectives. What is required is an overall (or metacultural) understanding of the

different demands of the school, implicit in everything from classroom activities and expectations

to language use. Only with such an understanding can one move toward a learning environment

where Aboriginal students’ identities are valued and respected through their languages. As noted

by LoBianco and Freedbody (1997, p. 62):

...“Western” models of literacy and education may be out of tune with crucial aspects

of Aboriginal cultures, beliefs and values. Literacy education for Aboriginal peoples has

a regrettable history of cultural bias and deficit images, of remedial and inappropriate

developmental approaches and assessment models in education resulting in damaging

educational and social outcomes from schooling for Indigenous people.

Moving away from deficit models involves embedding pluralism and diversity in all the

structures of schooling, but also taking seriously the demands for academic achievement which

parents are making.

“[Governments across Australia]

affirm the right of Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander people to sustain

their languages and cultures…”

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Education Action Plan (MCEECDYA,

2010, p. 3)


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A dialect is a “language variety

in which the use of grammar and

vocabulary identifies the regional

or social background of the user”.

(Crystal, 1992, p. 101)

With this embedded pluralism in mind, and the recognition of the right of all Australians to

access higher education and the benefits it brings, there has been a requirement to achieve a

more inclusive foundation for learning. Goal 1 of the Melbourne Declaration (Australia’s current

overarching statement on education) states that all governments and schools should “ensure that

schools build on local cultural knowledge and experience of Indigenous students as a foundation

for learning”. Likewise, the Australian Curriculum includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Histories and Cultures as one of three cross-curriculum priorities to continue through schooling and

across learning areas.

These measures are prerequisites for achieving the “equity and excellence” that the

Melbourne Declaration envisages. It recognises that there are different cultures, Indigenous

and non-Indigenous, coming together in the classroom and creating valuable opportunities for

learning. This provides opportunities for improved learning of critical literacy and cross-cultural

understanding, both important commodities for social and cultural prosperity in an increasingly

globalised world.

2. Cross-cultural communication: dialect difference and its significance

“Everyone speaks at least one dialect whether it be African American English, Singapore English,

Standard British English or Australian Vernacular English” (Malcolm, 2011a). The dialect that is

spoken by many Aboriginal people is Aboriginal English. The dialect that is taught in Australian

schools is SAE.

The difference between these two dialects can

seem to be minimal at times: many of the words are

shared (though, equally, many words are not – see

Figure 10), and the grammar has similarities as do

the sounds.


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Word type Example Meaning in Australian

English

Aboriginal word +

Aboriginal meaning

yorga

(Nyungar)

girl/woman

Aboriginal word + extra

meaning

monartj

(Nyugnar language)

police

Originally: black cockatoo

Aboriginal word + English

morphology

yorgas girls/women

(+ plural marker which is

not present in Nyungar)

Aboriginal word from

English words

mudaga/mudagar

(from ‘motorcar’)

car

English word + English

meaning

computer computer

English word + Aboriginal

meaning (1)

jarred told off

English word + morphology

change

yous you (plural)

Figure 10: List of word forms in Aboriginal English (adapted from Malcolm et al., 1999)

There is also a great deal of variety at the less visible level of language and, as seen in this research,

this can lead to misunderstanding in the classroom.

Words in Aboriginal English, for example, may take multiple forms:


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Word type Meaning in Aboriginal

English+conceptualisation

Meaning in Australian

English+conceptualisation

English word + Aboriginal

meaning (2) and

conceptualisation

land (ancestral/group

ownership, spiritual

connection)

- land is life

land (earth, personal

ownership, e.g. farm)

enclosed by man-made

parameters

- land is to be “lived off”

Figure 11: English word + Aboriginal meaning (2) and conceptualisation

The culture of the user is embedded in the language habitually used. This research reflects how

Aboriginal cultural conceptualisations are embedded in the English Aboriginal students’ use.

Extract 11, covered in the description of the fire schema in the previous section (see Chapter II:

page 51), shows that the teacher and the student, G, have different conceptualisations of “fire” –

both speakers understand and relate to fire differently. These different understandings, or cultural

conceptualisations, result in contrasting emotional responses to fire that are invisible at the level of

words or grammar.

These differences in how language is used and perceived can create misunderstandings and

therefore potentially negatively impact students’ learning. It has long been noted that teachers can

have negative perceptions about students’ “personality traits, motivational levels, and academic

potential” if they speak a low-prestige dialect or are part of “an ethnic group whose language

patterns are stigmatised” (Williams et al., 1971, cited in Durkin, 1995, p. 276).

For many Aboriginal students, learning in school entails learning a new dialect; that is, they are

learning a new way of seeing the world, new words, rules of language and concepts. The invisible

aspects of dialect learning (such as differing conceptualisations or pragmatics of the dialect of

the school) mean that the teaching and learning process involves unique challenges, particularly

when compared to the relatively clear language distinctions the student faces when learning an

additional language. This whole process can be disorienting or even confronting for the learner,


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and, as such, needs to be addressed in the classroom for the learning process to be effective. In

other words, teachers, AIEOs, other teacher assistants and students need to know that different

dialects are in operation. Ignorance of this can cause breakdowns in communication, which impact

on learning as well as participation and motivation.

It has been observed by Malcolm (2010) that Wallace Chafe (1994, p. 38) describes language as

“a pane of glass through which ideas are transmitted from speaker to listener. Under ordinary

circumstances language users are not conscious of the glass itself but only of the ideas that pass

through it.” In other words, it is possible to take language for granted.

As Figure 12 below shows, when two dialects are being used to communicate, the glass becomes

“frosted” to some degree. What is conceptualised and then communicated in one way from one

side of the glass may be received, if at all, quite differently on the other. The wider the conceptual

gap between the dialects, the more impenetrable the frosting on the glass.

Standard Australian English Dialect Filter

The Lexico-semantic System

Aboriginal English

Our Traditional Language

Our Meal

COUNTRY

LANGUAGE

FEED

Abstraction Experiential

collective form for any country

abstract form - country vs city

political entity, e.g. Australia

abstraction - what we speak

collective form for any language

requires adjective, e.g. French, to apply to a specific language

something fed(e.g. to animals or infants)

colourful idiom for a plentiful meal

Our Traditional Land

Figure 12: The Dialect Filter: words and their meanings (Malcolm, 2007)


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3. Valuing the dialect of the student: the foundation of two-way bidialectal education

Valuing the students entails valuing their language and the culture embedded therein. In school

where the assumed dialect is SAE, yet the language most Aboriginal students bring from home is

Aboriginal English, dialect difference and its social implications create a power imbalance.

Aboriginal English and SAE are necessarily a part of the lives of students in schools. The

relationship of these dialects to one another can be, to some extent, oppositional, in that

Aboriginal English is an ethnic dialect (or ethnolect) which has been maintained by Aboriginal

communities to express their distinctiveness as a sociocultural group. It may not be acceptable

to use SAE in some Aboriginal contexts as it could transgress sociocultural norms. Likewise, it is

not generally acceptable to use Aboriginal English within the wider discourse of higher learning.

It is important that the school values the dialect of the student to reduce, as far as possible, any

potential tension between the two dialects. Teachers can provide appropriate contexts for the use

of Aboriginal English, while clarifying for students the expectations of the wider society in respect

to the contexts where only SAE is appropriate. Two-way learning is a way of creating a space for

this kind of mutual recognition to develop.

The term “two-way” has been used in a variety of different educational contexts in Australia, in

particular in the Northern Territory (McConvell, 1982). Here, it is used to describe an approach

adopted by the Western Australian Department of Education where both Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal students and educators mutually explore their knowledge about cultural difference,

language variation and how different conceptualisations can interact to change meaning.

They learn from each other by exchanging understandings about their respective schemas. In

classrooms, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators work as two-way teams; they collaborate for

planning, assessment and curriculum development. They join forces for classroom management

and the production of cross-cultural materials; they co-deliver lessons and model code-switching.

Working as a two-way team is a means of making the implicit explicit through deconstructing

the language, analysing its meanings and exploring how it is used and conceptualised. Aboriginal

students are guided in the development of SAE competence in a manner that affirms their cultural

identities. At the same time, while they develop their own SAE literacy, non-Aboriginal students


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are provided with opportunities to gain a degree of receptive4 communicative competence in

Aboriginal English. This way, all students can learn about new cultural conceptualisations and

thereby develop competencies to operate safely and efficiently in intercultural contexts.

Effective two-way teaching and learning programs take account of four fundamental dimensions:

relationship building, mutual comprehension building, repertoire building and skill building

(Malcolm & Truscott, forthcoming). The Relationship Building dimension needs to be the first step

and remain in constant operation. However, all dimensions operate at the same time rather than

following any particular order.

1) Relationshipbuilding involves motivating communication between Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal students by facilitating their contact on a basis of equal respect.

2) Mutualcomprehensionbuilding requires Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff and students

to recognise where the differences between their respective dialects entail communication

problems and help one another to overcome these problems.

3) Repertoire building includes explicit teaching of differences between Aboriginal English

and SAE, viewing learning SAE as adding to learners’ language/literacy repertoire, as well

as developing some receptive knowledge of Aboriginal English to add to the intercultural

language/literacy repertoire of non-Aboriginal students and teachers.

4) Skill building in SAE involves helping Aboriginal learners to understand the benefits of

learning SAE as an additional dialect which will provide enhanced opportunities for life

and learning, as well as demonstrating high expectations of Aboriginal learners’ ability to

acquire and use the dialect.

5 Receptive refers to the receptive modes of language – listening, reading and understanding – rather than productive modes of language of speaking and writing.


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The way these four dimensions play out in a school context is exemplified in Figure 13 below.

Aim School/Principal Teacher Aboriginal Staff Students

Relationship building

To motivate communication

a) Community contact- reciprocal visitation- cross-generation

relationshipsb) School policy

- cross cultural sensitivity

- use of Aboriginal English

c) Staff development- enculturation of

staffd) Bicultural school

environment

a) Empowerment of Aboriginal staff- shared planning- appropriate class

roleb) Openness to

appropriate use of Aboriginal English (home language – HL)

c) Class Policy- mutual respect

building- mutual cultural

learning- mutual dialect

acceptanced) Classroom

environment

a) Community contact- with Principal- independently

b) Providing input to teacher- on student

communication- on cultural

sensitivities- on learning

materialsc) Providing input

and counselling to students

a) Reciprocal respectful relationship building

b) Reciprocal cultural learning

c) Working in bicultural pairs and groups

d) Equal access to empowerment through election of school councillors

Mutual comprehension building

To facilitate communication

a) Staffing- appointing sufficient

Aboriginal staff- providing

appropriate bicultural staff induction

b) Staff development- performance

managementc) Resourcing

- allocating time- funding resources

a) Classroom organisation

b) Organising learning in small groups and pairs

c) Exploiting bidialectal competence of Aboriginal staff

d) Mutual sociolinguistic enabling

e) Developing cross-dialectal listening skills

a) Providing interpretation and translation to teacher

b) Providing interpretation to students as needed

c) Assisting in modifying learning materials

d) Assisting in classroom enculturation of students

e) Counselling disaffected students

a) Assisting culturally different students with mutual expression and understanding

b) Learning from culturally diverse materials

c) Acquiring cross-dialectal listening and comprehension skills

Repertoire building

To expand communication

a) Mandating recognition of prior English learning in literacy instruction

b) Incorporating bidialectal competencies in school assessment policy

c) Promotion of bias-free ways of referring to HL

a) Designated HL timeb) Bidialectal learning

resources (developed or modified)

c) Bidialectal learning strategies

d) Multi-modal communicative support

e) Celebrating bidialectalism

a) Modelling Aboriginal English

b) Modelling code-switching

c) Alerting teachers to cross-dialectal conceptual mismatches

a) Aboriginal students developing active bidialectal skills including biliteracy and code switching

b) Non-aboriginal students developing passive bidialectal skills

Skill building To enhance learning

a) Providing literacy materials for home use

b) Providing time for modification of SAE learning materials

c) Ongoing professional development for all

d) Rewarding biliteracy

a) Bridging from established HL literacy to SAE literacy

b) Exploit teaching of dimensions of dialect contrast

c) Biliteracy learning resources

d) Systematic recording of SAE progress (using tools such as the ESU/ESD Progress map)

e) Bidialectal assessment

a) Assisting with bidialectal assessment

b) Ongoing feedback to teachers on student learning problems

c) Ongoing feedback to community on student progress

a) Peer feedback in pairs or groups

b) Using appropriate home literacy materials

c) Setting progressing achievement goals

Figure 13: Summary of the aims and dimensions of two-way learning

In the following section, some practical steps for planning and implementing two-way bidialectal

education will be suggested to complement these dimensions. This is not meant to be a

comprehensive description; however, key features of a bidialectal program are highlighted.

(For more detailed information about this, refer to Malcolm & Truscott (ibid).)


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Two-way bidialectal education: how to do it

1) Planningandcurriculumdevelopment

“What is required are teachers who are aware of what individual students are thinking and

knowing, who can construct meaning and meaningful experiences in light of this knowledge,

and who have proficient knowledge and understanding of what progression means in their

content to provide meaningful and appropriate feedback.” (Hattie, 2009, p. 36)

Working two-way enhances relationships in the classroom, impacts on teacher expectations of the

students and promotes the kind of talk and reflection about teaching and learning that generates

a more positive learning environment. This provides a suitable starting point for planning and

curriculum development, especially for those Aboriginal students who are entering an environment

that is culturally new to them.

Planning involves the following two stages:

1. Identifying Aboriginal English speakers.

2. Developing bidialectal curriculum.

1.1.IdentifyingAboriginalEnglishspeakers

In some cases, educators may lack clear information as to which students in a class are Aboriginal.

There may be no reliable cues given by factors such as the students’ appearance or residence.

Although general awareness about Aboriginal English is increasing in education, some educators

may be unsure if some of their students are indeed Aboriginal English speakers, especially when

their pronunciation sounds like that of other students and the significance of Aboriginal English

surface features of the dialect, such as intonation, words and grammar, may not be apparent.

One of the important findings of this research is that we need to look below the surface to

see whether or not the student’s orientation is toward Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal ways of

approaching experience. The research supports the view that dialect may be evidenced at the

conceptual level even when it is difficult to discern at the physical level.


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To identify whether or not a student speaks Aboriginal English and to grasp a more complete

understanding of his/her language abilities, it is important to know how the student communicates

inside and outside of the classroom. Inside, the student may feel linguistically constrained; outside,

the student may set his/her own parameters for communication.

Where available, the AIEO is likely to be able to help identify if the student is an Aboriginal English

speaker through knowledge of the local context and through knowledge about the student’s

family and their language. Where no AIEO is present, talking to the community or other family

members may also assist. A systematic overview of all the features of Aboriginal English is provided

in Malcolm and Grote (2007) and a checklist which can assist teachers to conduct a diagnostic

assessment of their students’ language features is also provided in Konigsberg and Collard (eds)

(2011), and Malcolm (2007).

Teachers can of course make their own deliberate attempts to conduct diagnostic assessments of

the students. Recordings (both audio and audio-visual) of students’ speech can be done in a range

of contexts to capture students using language in daily classroom practices like news telling or

working in groups. Transcribing these speech recordings will allow in-depth analysis and further

reflection.

Figure 14 shows one example of a transcription of an oral recount from this research project.

It reflects the kind of annotations a teacher could make on assessing the language in terms of SAE

and Aboriginal English use. While one piece of work is not enough on which to base decisions

about a student’s competence, it can provide clues as to what SAE language features a student

may/may not have difficulties with.

Other monitoring tools, such as the Western Australian Department of Education’s ESL/ESD

Progress Map, would also be of assistance when planning the areas of SAE on which the student

needs most work.

Often, the evidence of Aboriginal English may emerge when a student responds unexpectedly to

an initiation by the teacher, or produces written expression which shows that key word endings

or function words (like “is”) are lacking. The educator should, then, be slow to judge students’

language as incorrect and quick to look for evidence of dialect.


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Exampletranscription: Recall of John Brown text

Figure 14: Annotated transcription of a student recall


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1.2. Developing a bidialectal curriculum

Having gained an understanding of the students’ abilities in their home language and SAE, it is then

important to work on a teaching and learning plan.

An important element of bidialectal education is to ensure the students feel that their ways of

speaking and seeing the world (and by extension, those of their family) are valued. This involves

validating the students’ use of Aboriginal English and allowing structured use in the classroom.

That is, certain tasks, such as brainstorming, planning, conceptualising, journal writing or story

telling, can be conducted in Aboriginal English; other tasks, such as report writing, delivering

formal speeches or role plays, can be structured in SAE. For added recognition of the bidialectal

nature of the classroom, or indeed the school, educators may consider developing a policy that

promotes equality of respect between the dialects and their speakers. Figure 15 below shows one

way this can be done through the creation of a bidialectal poster made by an early-childhood AIEO.

Exampleactivityforequalityofdialect:Abrainstormofwordsforabidialectalwordchart

(example below) or dictionary that could be compiled over time. These could be used in

vocabulary building activities, print walks and general cross-cultural understanding.

Figure 15: Example of validating home language in the classroom and drawing attention to dialect difference

Courtesy of Rangeway Aboriginal Intensive Language Centre Trial, 2011


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Once the dialectal competency is better understood and is recognised and valued, then planning

may begin. Clear purpose is necessary to guide the choice of learning activities, explicit teaching

of language features, multiple opportunities to practise language and opportunities to develop

code-switching skills. Preparation is needed to minimise misunderstandings and maximise

cross-cultural learning. When planning for success, the students, the activity itself and the

expectations/prior knowledge of the teacher all need to be assessed. One of the aims of two-way

learning is to “prime the senses” of Aboriginal students to what non-Aboriginal people are

responding to, and at the same time to prime the senses5 of non-Aboriginal students to what

Aboriginal students are experiencing.

We have adopted the term priming to refer to the process required for preparing a learning activity

in a bidialectal context. It involves three elements:

1. Priming the two-way team: Reflecting on the two-way teams’ mutual conceptual prior

knowledge about a given text or activity.

2. Priming the students: Establishing the conceptual and factual prior knowledge of the

students.

3. Preparing the text: Identifying what new language and conceptualisations need to be taught

for students to be able to access the text.

5 (Palmer, 1996, p. 47)


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Figure 16 shows how these three elements are interconnected.

1. Priming the two-way team

What are our conceptualisations?

2. Priming the students

What are the

Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal students’

conceptualisations? What

is their prior knowledge?

3. Preparing the text

What conceptualisations

and language are needed

to understand the

text? What needs to be

explicitly taught?

Figure 16: The three elements of priming

It is important to communicate and to teach non-Aboriginal schemas to Aboriginal students so that

they can share understanding with non-Aboriginal students and gain the required knowledge to

access curriculum materials. The level of explicitness needed will depend on the context, but it is

essential to develop the learners’ cross-cultural understanding.

Explicit teaching

A deep understanding of language requires explicit attention to all the different aspects of

language such as the sounds (phonology), words and their meanings (morphology and semantics),

grammar (syntax), text structures (genres), how language is used (pragmatics) and its conceptual

underpinnings.

Explicit language teaching involves ensuring that students have the required language (SAE) to

access curriculum content, undertake tasks, understand the relevance and purpose of any activity

and produce meaningful texts. For all students, it involves understanding the comprehension

demands of a task or a text and then teaching the key language features and concepts to ensure


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full cross-cultural understanding of the text. Figure 17 gives two brief examples of explicit teaching

of language and explicit sharing of conceptualisations. (Appendix 4 provides examples of activities

to support scaffolding of all other levels of language.)

Exampleactivityforexplicitlanguage:buildinglanguagethroughlanguagegrids.

Example 1: Developing alternative to “then” using “after + gerund”: e.g. I eat dinner then I

have a rest.

After eating my dinner

coming home from school

playing with friends

I have a rest.

Example 2: Creating compound sentences and analysing cultural conceptualisations

When the bell rang they ran indoors

they lined up

they packed up

and got ready for first day assembly.

Sample questions to elicit conceptualisations:

Where are they? Why are they running? (Interpretation) What does the place look like?

What’s going to happen next? (Prediction)

The modelled language and answers to the questions could be noted on a sheet/poster and

used in a print walk activity (see activities below).

Note: Terms are context based and will vary to suit activities and students’ needs.

Figure 17: Examples of explicit teaching of grammar

The key point here is to ensure that explicit teaching of language occurs at all levels of language,

with special attention given to the cultural conceptual understandings of students.


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Providingopportunitiestopractisecodeswitching

Code switching is fundamental to bidialectal education as it is the skill that best enables

Aboriginal English speakers to maintain strength of identity while, at the same time, becoming

fully competent in SAE contexts. Code switching skills involve both linguistic and conceptual levels

and are developed unconsciously as well as consciously, in incremental steps over all the years of

schooling and beyond. For bidialectal education to work, it is essential for the learner to become

aware of the existence of two dialects. Code switching skills need to reach a level of consciousness

that enables students to notice code switching, when it happens and how to use it to their

advantage. In teaching, the separation of codes is required when correcting SAE usage so that

students are clear that any corrections made relate to incorrect attempts at producing SAE text,

rather than their use of Aboriginal English.

Obviously, this meta-awareness will develop over time as early childhood learners will not be in

a position to make major distinctions between dialects, but these skills will be enhanced when

deconstructed (again, over time) in a classroom with the guidance of both the Aboriginal and the

non-Aboriginal educator (if available).

Older learners should be encouraged to reflect on the social features of language use, such as the

relationship between language and power. Discussion could then focus on when, why and how

code switching should occur.

Developing materials

Using the knowledge gained from priming the students, two-way teams can create their own

classroom materials or modify existing materials to make them more appropriate for a bidialectal

program. Malcolm et al. (2002) looked at this area by conducting a two-way analysis of over 100

cross-curricular texts along four dimensions: linguistic analysis; discourse/text/sociolinguistic

analysis; conceptual-cultural analysis; and pedagogical analysis. Considerations for material

development are summarised below (Malcolm et al., ibid, p. 27):


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i. Linguistic principles

• In using SAE, make the most of the areas where it aligns with Aboriginal English.

• Be consistent in the way the dialect (either SAE or Aboriginal English) is used.

• Develop materials in which SAE is introduced in a controlled way (with due regard to the

ways in which it contrasts with Aboriginal English).

ii. Sociolinguistic/discoursal principles

• The materials should use the respective dialects in settings where they would naturally

occur.

• The dialect/s should be used in the way it/they would naturally be used.

• The materials should not exclude Aboriginal speakers by using SAE in contexts where

Aboriginal English is appropriate.

iii. Conceptual/cultural principles

• The major categories and imagery should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.

• Story/event schemas should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.

• Proposition schemas (i.e. assumed wisdom) should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.

iv. Pedagogical principles

• The communication represented in the materials should be authentic.

• The materials should be adaptable to pedagogical exploitation.

• The materials should be approachable for the learner.

Practical implications for this are discussed below in How to exploit culturally inclusive and

exclusive tests.

Clearpurposeforlearningactivities

One key factor in bidialectal education is the need to clarify in the planning stage which essential

elements to include so that Aboriginal students are provided with plenty of opportunities to extend

their SAE repertoire. A clear purpose should be maintained during language activities so teachers

know whether to engage in bidialectal exploration for deeper knowledge of language variation


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and its effect on meaning and comprehension, or whether to incrementally extend students’ SAE

competency.

The reason why students are doing a particular learning activity and what is needed for success in

that activity should be clear. Planning should also provide for plenty of opportunities for recycling

SAE language that is new to the students and for continuous evaluation of student progress. Being

clear about the purpose assists students to evaluate how they are faring and enables two-way

teams to remain responsive to their particular students’ needs.

Exampleactivityforexplicitpurpose:Yarningtime

News Telling is a common classroom practice that may be socially and culturally confronting

for some Aboriginal students. Instead, Yarning time can involve structured discussion sitting in

a circle, around a fire (made from sticks brought in by the students, and red and yellow pieces

of scrap paper). Students are allowed to add to each other’s yarns by contributing if they

share the yarn being told. They are also allowed to remain seated. The explicit purpose is to

share information with friends/peers.

Students can then be explicitly taught, over time, the required SAE language and protocols for

News Telling, which would take place in another part of the classroom. The explicit purpose is

to communicate news like on a news channel.

Courtesy of Medina Primary School, 2010

Evaluating,selectingandinterpretingtexts

Evaluating and selecting texts on which teaching

and learning is based requires conscious attention

of the two-way team. Texts can be interpreted

in different ways, by different people and

different cultures. The common literacy skills of

interpretation and prediction rely on familiarity of

“The reading of texts that do not

reflect the cultural background

assumptions and constructs as the

reader can be time-consuming and

laborious.” (Steffensen, 1988)


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context and language. Learners may need to be explicitly taught the required language and related

schemas to fully understand the text, and so teachers need to take this into consideration.

It is impossible for everyone to be aware of all the different cultural interpretations of language.

What is possible, however, is to be prepared for them. Before introducing texts to the classroom

and as a part of the priming process, two-way teams need to reflect on questions such as:

• What cultural understandings support the text?

• Are there particular characters, objects, events that have an underlying meaning that may

be viewed differently by Aboriginal students?

• How can we work two-way to build shared understanding?

It is said that a reader needs to understand at least 95% of running words in a text in order to

comprehend the text and to learn new words from context (Nation, 2006). However, as we have

seen in the case of Aboriginal-English speaking students, words can have different implications

in the text as different proposition schemas might be at play. This rule of thumb is therefore very

difficult to apply, especially since both non-Aboriginal teachers and Aboriginal students may be

unaware that they do not share certain understandings and meanings. Teachers will therefore need

to pay particular attention to the meaning (for themselves and the students) of possibly culturally

loaded comprehension words, such as understand, interpret and predict, and how these words can

be carried out when making judgements about the suitability of classroom texts.

Figure 18 shows a two-way procedure for assessing

and interpreting a text. This example procedure is

a key factor of priming an activity and shows the

kind of initial conversation that can take place in

a two-way team when deciding on a text. As the

story progresses, possible questions (these would of course depend on the story) and the possible

proposition schemas are discussed. A similar discussion would accompany the selection of all kinds

of texts (such as informational and persuasive).

Proposition schemas: statements

of the implicit understanding and

relationships behind a concept.


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Story Possiblequestions Possibleproposition

schemas

Once upon a

time, in a land

far away, lived

an old man

and his dog…

What kind of story is this going to be?

What are your predictions? Why?

What does the land

man

dog

look like?

Why was the man living alone with his

dog?

Aboriginal:

• It is not good for a man to

live away from his people

• It is not good to live alone

• It is not good to be away

from country for too long

Non-Aboriginal:

• It shows a pioneering

spirit for an individual

to leave home to go far

away

One day, he

said to his dog:

Why is he talking to his dog?

Does he always talk to the dog?

Aboriginal:

• It is not normal for a man

to make plans with an

animal

Non-Aboriginal:

• It is normal that animals

can be treated like they

are a part of human plans

“It’s time we

moved on...”

Why is it time to move on?

Is he always moving on?

Aboriginal:

• Travelling is often a part

of life

Non-Aboriginal:

• Travelling may happen if

the man is in trouble

Figure 18: Example two-way priming procedure for interpreting a narrative text

This strategy allows educators to quickly assess the suitability of a text (in this case a children’s

book) for the class or learner. This informal analysis then also needs to be complemented by a


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language overview sheet. The overview is developed by going through the book, page by page, and

writing down all the different conceptualisations and language features, such as verbs, pronouns

and/or whatever other features are deemed to be relevant. This is particularly effective if done as a

two-way team as it allows for two different cultural interpretations of a text.

Figure 19 is an example of what a completed language overview could look like for John Brown,

Rose and the Midnight Cat.

Book title: JOHN BROWN, ROSE AND THE MIDNIGHT CAT Author: JENNY WAGNERPublished by Picture Puffin

Singular/plural in nouns (man/men)Cat, milk, dog, garden, line, house, bed, shadow, pear tree, knitting, milk bottles, clock, bowl of milk, book, glass, curtains, kitchen, breakfast, supper, supper time, arm, chairCommon nouns:Rose, John Brown

Singular/plural in verbs (there is/there are: She had/ they have)I’m, we are, there is

QuestionsDon’t you see him now?What’s that in the garden, John Brown?Isn’t he beautiful? All day? Will the midnight cat make you better?

Past tenseDied, lived, loved, looked after, sat, watched, dozed, kept company, looked out, went, saw, shut, wound up, took out, got up, jumped up, followed, tipped out, were, shone, pulled shut, did not get up, waited, went, got up, sat, purredPast continuous: was thinking

Other tenses(Direct speech) are, don’t see, ‘m, ‘s, don’t need, is, don’t you see (him now?), ‘m sickImperative: go, look, get up, let him in,Future: will… make won’t letPresent continuous: I’m stayingInfinitive: to stay awayConditional: he could

QuantificationSome, an hour past

Metaphor/simileEyes like lamps

Possessionhis

PronounsShe, he

AdjectivesRagged, beautiful, midnight

Sounds/s/slipped/sh/shadow/z/Rose

PreparationBy the fire, on the arm of the chair, in the kitchen, against the ragged sky, with her dog, in the garden

Word meaning/Other meaningWinding up a clock[wind up: person = annoy/ an act = finish]Supper time

Conceptualisations/schemeKitchen in western culture/ non-western

Winding clock vs changing battery

cat → warning dog → protection rooing

Died Taking milk bottles out

midnight → bad things

fire → safe, healer

Pragmatics(can be associated with the illustrations)Look – to bring attention vs. reprimand “All day and forever”

Figure 19: Language Overview sheet for John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, by Jenny Wagner


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Once the overview is completed, educators can make important judgements about the suitability

of the text. Figure 20 looks at the example language overview (Figure 19) and lists some possible

judgements about the text and teaching implications, especially in relation to the Aboriginal

learners’ needs:

Judgement: this text has… Implication:thistextis…

• lots of examples of the

past tense

• good for exposing the student to the past tense in SAE

• not good for students for practising present tense in SAE

• lots of nouns • made up of very location and culture specific words

• Considerations: Will our students be familiar with these

nouns? Which ones need to be taught explicitly? Which

ones can lead to deeper cultural explanations?

• the context of “putting out milk bottles” will be unfamiliar

to all students

• potential for conflicting

conceptualisations

• good for drawing out different conceptualisations

• Considerations: How will students view death, the cat,

fire and the dog? How can we capitalise on the students’

different cultural conceptualisations for the benefit of all

students? What can we discuss when priming the students?

Figure 20: Example of grammatical and conceptual judgements based on the language overview.

2)Implementingtheteachingandlanguageprogram

Time is a precious commodity for any teacher, and time invested in providing students with the

opportunity for exploration and practice on a deep level is especially important for learners of SAE.

For students to learn new concepts, new ways of interpretation and language use, learning needs

to be presented in an iterative manner with plenty of opportunity for the practice and recycling

of new language. The benefit of investing time in the preparation of the program (by the two-way

team) will reap rewards in the long term.


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2.1.Settingupbidialectalcommunicationactivities

Students need to understand when and why to use

which dialect. Bidialectal communication activities

entail using Aboriginal English to bridge to SAE,

incorporating code switching abilities between the

dialects.

It is important that activities provide opportunities

for exploration of language use and new language

structures. The level and extent of associated

discussions about purpose will depend on the context. Example questions could be:

• Why is it important to be able to tell the difference between two dialects?

• Why is only one dialect appropriate for a particular task, such as writing a report of

scientific findings?

• Is it appropriate to use Aboriginal English when sending text messages?

• When can texts in Aboriginal English be published?

• What are Aboriginal English texts most useful for?

2.2.HowtopromoteSAEcompetencethroughscaffolding

Scaffolding requires learning to be targeted at a

point just, but not completely, beyond the abilities

of the learner. It is with the temporary help of

the teacher, through explicit teaching, that the

student’s learning progresses.

When planning to scaffold language, all levels of

language should be looked at. Gibbons (2002) notes that focused teaching of phonics, spelling and

grammar is important, but should not “compromise interactive and meaning-driven classroom

practices” (2002, p. 132). She lists three main principles to consider:

“To understand a word as its speaker

intended or to use it appropriately,

it is necessary to know the schema

or schemas to which it belongs in a

particular context of use.” (Palmer,

1996, p. 66)

“What the child is able to do in

collaboration today he will be able

to do independently tomorrow.”

(Vygotsky, 1987, p. 211)


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1. Move from whole to part (and then back to whole).

2. Move from meaning to form (and then back to meaning).

3. Move from familiar to unfamiliar (and then back to familiar).

A further point to bear in mind is that cultural conceptualisations will bear on all levels of language

as they can be instantiated through a range of linguistic (and non-linguistic) devices such as sounds,

words and sentences. All these areas can be taught concurrently to provide rich language learning.

The case example below (Figure 21) illustrates the kind of steps that could precede learning

activities (see Appendix 4 for additional examples) focusing on all the levels of language. Within the

three basic stages of this example, scaffolding progresses over two stages: student’s language (the

familiar) and the new or target language (the unfamiliar).

Case example: Mini Lesson:Questioning/Requestinginformation

Context:

• Class has already covered a variety of question forms. Class has covered metalanguage

(e.g. verb and noun).

• Teacher has picked up on the use of a particular Aboriginal English (AE) utterances

(you got crayon?) and consequently wants to specifically focus on questions for

making requests.

Step I: Elicit prior knowledge:

Brainstorm different kinds of request questions (from AE and SAE perspectives) using, for

example, props for role plays. Teacher writes AE questions on one side of board and SAE on

other side of board.

Stage 1 – Students’ language:

1. You got crayon?

2. Have you got a crayon?

(Accompanying this would be the discussion about: when 1 and 2 may be used for different

purposes, such as a yes/no question [do you have a crayon?] as opposed to an indirect

request [can you give me a crayon?]; knowledge of context; and other influencing factors.


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StepII:Establishnewknowledge/targetlanguage:

Teacher: The verb is important to make it clear it’s a request. To ask a question in SAE, you

need to say, “can you give me a crayon?” Model and drill.

Stage 2: Target language 1 (verbs in sentence) (provided by teacher)

Can you give

lend

pass

me a crayon

pencil

sharpener

please?

Elicit further examples (for example, of nouns). Have students come and write on board,

ensuring they write on appropriate side of the board. It will be important to show that this is

a formula that they can use in lots of cases, e.g. nouns.

Target language 2 (nouns)

Can you give

lend

pass

me a crayon

pencil

sharpener

please?

StepIII:Practise:

Run activities across modes (for example, role plays, reading scripts and sentence

construction)

Follow-up lesson (sometime in the future when needed): “could you give…?”

Figure 21: Case example of a mini questioning lesson

2.3. How to exploit culturally inclusive and exclusive texts

Exposure of students to a range of genres needs to be accompanied by appropriate support to

develop the use of those genres. The support comes in the form of explicit teaching of the genre’s

particular language features. Looking at the language used in different genres is important when

understanding inclusivity in texts.

Inclusivity (or exclusivity, depending on the viewpoint) in texts occurs at the content level (what

matter is being treated and how is it depicted?) and the linguistic level. Often, the linguistic level is


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interpreted at the level of grammar or nouns, for example, using loaded terms which imply some

kind of hierarchy (underdeveloped or third world countries), or terms that highlight a particular

race or gender (chairman vs. chairperson). However, as this research has shown, exclusion can also

occur at other levels of language.

Malcolm et al. (2003) found that texts which would seem to be inclusive at the content level for

Aboriginal students displayed linguistic features (such as the style of the text and which verb tenses

were used) that actually excluded Aboriginal-English speaking readers. Summarised below are

features of SAE that do not occur in Aboriginal English. Lack of familiarity with these features will

have an exclusionary impact on the Aboriginal-English speaking listener/reader. Figure 22 looks at

some of these language features with respect to the texts used in this research project.

Existential clauses all the birds were the same colour (The Magic Colours)

Embedded clause and

conceptualisation (through

the shadow of)

which came through the cracks of the basket (Ping)

The next night Rose saw the midnight cat as he slipped

through the shadow of the pear tree (John Brown, Rose

and the Midnight Cat)

Passive and nominalisation The King was amused at the sight of the black cat in yellow

boots (Puss in Boots)

Non-Subject Verb Object

ordering

Down the freeway the family drove (Bushfire)

Multiple Attributive Adjectives

and conceptualisation

Strange arching shapes (Bushfire)

Contingent –ing clauses where reapers were busy, cutting the wheat (Puss in Boots)

Figure 22: Example language features that may be unfamiliar to Aboriginal English speakers


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In addition to these linguistic features are the cultural conceptual elements that can exclude or

include students; this has been the subject of this research.

Having identified the language competence of the students and deduced potentially problematic

language features, it is possible to devise a targeted teaching and learning plan that addresses

these points. Following the main considerations for materials development (p.16), Malcolm et al.

(2003, p. 27) outline several implications for implementing this plan:

i. Materials which have an Indigenous focus are not necessarily inclusive, in that inclusivity is

shown in linguistic choices not only content.

ii. Materials concerned with non-Indigenous learning are not necessarily exclusive in that

Aboriginal students want to be seen as included in the wider world.

iii. Aboriginal educators need to be involved in materials evaluation and selection.

iv. By using critical pedagogical approaches (such as the diagnostic assessment of their

students’ language features and the language overview discussed above), teachers can

make good use of materials even where they are exclusive of Indigenous perspectives.

v. Most materials currently available require the teacher (with the help of students and

AIEOs or Aboriginal teacher) to make links with Aboriginal English as it exists in the lives of

contemporary Aboriginal people.

vi. The unevenness of the present availability of inclusive materials leaves room for two-way

materials development involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators.

2.4. How to give appropriate feedback

One area of concern among teachers is how to teach students the correct form in SAE without

seeming to “correct” their Aboriginal English; in other words, how to ensure students become

aware of forms that are “mistakes” in SAE when these are not “mistakes” in Aboriginal English. For

this, it is especially important to remind students that two dialects may be in operation. Students

need to be made aware of the SAE way of saying what they mean, while ensuring their dignity in

respect to the use of their own language remains intact. This may require discussion and some

explicit teaching.


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Students’ use of Aboriginal English, for appropriate purposes, can be valued in the classroom just

as the appropriate use of SAE is. If a student knows that the purpose is to produce a text in SAE,

then the teacher can either act immediately or at a later time. They can take note of the language

point, for example, use of “we bin go” instead of “we went”, and address it generally with the

group, or address it immediately but intimately with the student saying, “This is a correct response,

is it also correct in SAE? How can we say this in SAE?” The student can be encouraged to remember

previous lessons, or refer to displays on the walls of the classroom.

It is important to recognise that students do need feedback, and that it is not helpful to Aboriginal

learners to avoid pointing out their failure to use SAE correctly for fear of cultural and linguistic

sensitivities. If students are secure in the knowledge that their first dialect is respected and

accepted in appropriate contexts, they will not be threatened by having their attempts at using the

second dialect (SAE) corrected (in an appropriate way) when necessary. Indeed, such correction

shows the student that the educator is concerned with helping them with their learning.

2.5. Assessment

Assessment is a vital component of the teaching and learning cycle and as such needs to be

administered as appropriately and as effectively as possible. Obviously, the purpose of the

assessment will determine how it can be used, and while competence in SAE is an ultimate target

in educational settings, it is important to remember that ability in SAE language represents only a

fraction of the students’ overall cognitive and linguistic ability (Figure 23).

SAEAE

Potentially unacknowledged and unrecognised knowledge

Potentially assumed linguistic/cultural knowledge

Acknowledged and recognised

Figure 23: A view of the cross-over between Aboriginal English and SAE in the classroom


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Most conventional tests used in education were designed using norms collected from mostly

monolingual speakers over time and are therefore unable to showcase the complex knowledge

and experiences that lie outside such norms. However, the students’ own and different knowledge

and experiences are what will ultimately drive their learning. It is therefore important that time

and effort be invested in working out what the students know and what they might need to learn

by referring to the tools such as the diagnostic assessment of students’ language features, the

language overview and the Western Australian ESL/ESD Progress Map mentioned above.

An important part of the role of the educator is to develop dialect-sensitive modes of testing and of

reporting on test results. Ideally, the bidialectal student should be receiving credit for linguistic and

sociolinguistic competencies in both dialects rather than, as is commonly the case, being assessed

as a monodialectal SAE speaker. The reporting of assessment in SAE should recognise the principle

of staging, i.e. that the student will move in a graduated way towards command of the second

dialect.

III Summary and conclusion

This report has attempted to show the main findings of this research into Aboriginal-English

speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English and to

show how these findings might be applied, together with prior findings about Aboriginal English

and two-way bidialectal education.

We have seen how, in a significant number of cases, Aboriginal students’ recalls of stories to which

they had been exposed reflected their reliance on schemas that were different to those drawn

upon or intended by the author(s) of the original texts. This phenomenon appears to have been the

result of what we have termed reschematisation of linguistic input, which is the understanding of

information based on schemas available in the student’s conceptual repertoire.

The study was based on an analysis of responses to five texts in a limited range of genres,

including materials from traditional European, Asian and Australian sources, both Aboriginal and

non-Aboriginal.


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Bearing in mind the limited corpus of texts included in the study, the findings reveal that the

reschematisations made by the participating Aboriginal students relied on a limited number

of Aboriginal cultural schemas, such as the scary things schema (a class of Aboriginal Spiritual

schemas) and the warning schema. The resulting interpretations made by the students from this

study reflect an alternative understanding of the events within the narrative, or alternative roles

for the main characters. Overall, the findings of this study lend further support to the significant

role played by cultural schemas in cognitive processing, in particular in cross-cultural contexts.

Educationalimplications

The findings of this project have been related to existing research into Aboriginal English conducted

in Western Australia, and to the application of such research in the teaching and learning of

Aboriginal students. The implications of present and past research have been considered together

to give a more complete pedagogical picture and assist educators working as two-way teams in

delivering effective SAE language and literacy programs.

In general, the findings of the study reported upon here support the relevance of the knowledge

of background culture to the development of a school curriculum, in the sense that the choice of

culturally relevant materials impacts students’ processing and comprehension of texts depending

on how closely they share conceptualisations with the author of the text. The findings also

support and extend previous research findings that suggested the likelihood of miscommunication

between Aboriginal-English speaking students and school literacy materials on one hand, and

miscommunication with non-Aboriginal teachers on the other. The educational implications of

this are profound and relate to every aspect of educational life for Aboriginal students, from

curriculum presentation to curriculum delivery. The results of the project conducted prior to the

one reported here (Sharifian et al., 2004) revealed evidence that some non-Aboriginal educators

were unfamiliar with schemas that informed the narratives produced by Aboriginal students, and

as a result misunderstood the nature of their students’ recalls, in some cases significantly. The

findings of the project reported upon here suggest that Aboriginal students are likely to draw on

their own cultural schemas when making sense of texts that are not otherwise culturally accessible

to them. Overall, the findings of this study reiterate the key recommendation for the education of


96

Aboriginal students put forward in the last study: that is, there is “an urgent need for professional

development and the development of [linguistically inclusive] curriculum materials to demonstrate

the importance of cultural understanding and schemas in the comprehension of narrative texts”

(Sharifian et al., 2004, p. 28).

Working two-way allows for numerous opportunities for all students to become accustomed

to consciously exploring different ways of thinking and thus develop their cross-cultural

understanding. For Aboriginal students, it offers a chance to learn another form of English that

potentially allows them to access immense rewards. Importantly, it also allows for teachers,

AIEOs and teaching assistants to develop their understanding of all their students so that they can

provide more effective and positive learning experiences and encourage meaningful cross-cultural

critical literacy across the board.


rE

FE

rE

NC

ES

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Ap

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S

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Appendix 1: Student Background Sheets

Aboriginal-Englishspeakingstudents’(mis)understandingofschoolliteracy

materials in Australian English Project

Student background sheet

Name of school: ___________________________________________________

Name of student: ___________________________________________________

Date of birth: ___________________________________________________

Year level: ___________________________________________________

BackgroundInformation:

Please write down any background that you know about the student that might be

relevant to the research and to understanding the data given by the student.

Academic Performance: Example: Is the student attentive and keen to learn? In

your opinion, is he/she smart? How is the student performing in his/her studies

at school?


109

Staff/studentinteraction: Example: Have you noticed any kinds of

miscommunication or misunderstanding between any teachers or other

staff members and this student or between non-Aboriginal students and this

student?

Social: Example: How does the student behave at school? Does he/she mix

mainly with other family members or has this student befriended other

students?

Family/Upbringing: What is the student’s family like? Example: Nyungar/Yamaji

father and wadjella mother from Northam. Lives with aunty in Perth.


110

Other info: Any other information that may affect the way the student responds

to the task. (Please expand this document in length as required.)


111

Appendix 2: Table of comparison of conceptualisations

Informationfrom

original text

Targetconceptualisation+

Non-Aboriginal students

Aboriginalconceptualisation

(fromAboriginalstudents’

recalls)

Rose:

• An old lady

• Widow

• Widow [and therefore possibly

lives alone]

• A woman/girl

• Widow [and therefore possibly

lives with family]

• A woman/girl

John Brown:

• dog

• John Brown is jealous of the

cat

• Is the husband

• Doesn’t like cats [and vice

versa]

• A man

• The ghost of the dead husband

[Companion/guardian/

protector]

• [Dogs can sense evil spirits]

• [John Brown protects Rose

from evil spirit/the cat]

Midnight Cat:

• black

• drinks milk

• furry, cute

• kitten

• likes milk

• female

• a warning signal

• a bad spirit

• annoys people

• female or male

Fire:

• Doze by the fire

• Sat by fire

Relevance in narrative:

circumstantial

• [fireplace in a home]

Relevance in narrative:

substantial

• [healer/protector against

spirits]

• [fire in the backyard/a camp/

outside]


112

Appendix 3: Comparison of family schema from The Story about Ping

Aboriginal students Non-Aboriginal students

Order Original Nathan Jayden Jordy Sue Nathan Jack

1 mother

and father

42 cousins 42 aunts 11 aunies mum mum,

dad

mum,

dad

2 sisters and

3 brothers

7 something

else

aunts,

uncles

42

cousins

sister,

brother

37

cousins

brothers,

sisters

3 11 aunts

and 7

uncles

sisters,

brother

7 uncles father

4 42 cousins


113

Appendix 4: Example activities to support scaffolding of all levels of language6

Activities should be planned two-way to ensure relevance. For example, running a comparative/

superlative suffix activity using deadly → deadlier→ deadliest will need two-way consideration as

“deadly” has different (and opposing) meanings in Aboriginal English and SAE.

The sequence of the items within these levels does not imply a particular order.

Level of language Exampleactivity(tomodifyasappropriatedependingonlearners’

agegroup)

Stress/Intonation

(Prosody)

Songs, poems

Shadow reading

Phonology Minimal pairs (pat/bat, tin/din) games

Final letter clusters (that’s, first) : Sounds grid, Chinese Whispers

Words (Morphology) Roots of words (Greek and Latin origin and related meanings):

class activity – start a word bank on the wall where such words are

collected over the unit/term

Prefixes (mis-, re-, pre-, un-): affix games

Sentences (Syntax) Question forms: What’s the question? (accompanied by comparison

of questioning in Aboriginal English and SAE)

SAE Text cohesion: Cloze activity; jumbled sentences to practise

linking in SAE between sentences and paragraphs (first, second,

next, but, because, etc.) (accompanied by comparison with, where

possible, schema-based text cohesion in Aboriginal English)

Text form/Structure

(Genres)

Compare Aboriginal English and SAE narrative structures. Contrast

SAE structure (orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution,

coda) with Aboriginal English narratives which are driven by different

schemas (e.g. yarning, hunting, travel, etc.) (See Rochecouste &

Malcolm, 2000)

6 For additional ideas on what and how to scaffold, refer to the Tracks to Two-Way Learning (2011)


114

Level of language Exampleactivity(tomodifyasappropriatedependingonlearners’

agegroup)

The way language is

used (Pragmatics)

Role plays illustrating different ways language (such as phrases or

words) can vary in meaning according to context and the background

and/or intent of the speaker

Studying audio-visual texts looking at language use, possible

misinterpretations, etc.

Cultural conceptual Students draw, discuss and/or develop skits based on their

responses/interpretations to texts (including visual texts). Students

can start analysing individually through drawing, writing and/or

speaking, then move to pair work to compare and contrast their

representations and develop a joint representation of the story.


Department of Education

Department of Education151 Royal Street

East Perth WA 6004Telephone: (08) 9264 4111

OCS037 | Understanding stories my way: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English © 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education OCS037 | Understanding stories my way: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English © 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WAA

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