25.747, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Lo Bianco & Aliani (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-747. Thu Feb 13 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.747, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Lo Bianco & Aliani (2013)

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Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin Madison
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Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:47:34
From: Alicia Pousada [alicia.pousada.mejuto at gmail.com]
Subject: Language Planning and Student Experiences

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-2693.html

AUTHOR: Joseph  Lo Bianco
AUTHOR: Renata  Aliani
TITLE: Language Planning and Student Experiences
SUBTITLE: Intention, Rhetoric and Implementation
SERIES TITLE: Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Alicia Pousada, University of Puerto Rico

SUMMARY
 
Lo Bianco and Aliani, professors at the University of Melbourne, combine
historical and rhetorical analyses of forty years of language planning in
Australia with the quantitative and qualitative results of five years of
fieldwork in four public schools to demonstrate the gap between official
language policies and their implementation in classrooms. Their primary focus
is on how various language policies have been “received, perceived and enacted
in schools and among learners” (p. xv). They explain the need for policy
implementation to be seen as “a more active and agentive space” (p. 41) and
underscore the necessity of including public debate, media depictions, citizen
advocacy actions, and attitudes of parents, teachers, and students in any
comprehensive account of the country’s language planning efforts.

The book consists of a preface, establishing the aims, limitations, and
research questions, followed by five chapters. Chapter 1 (Remaking a nation
through language policy texts, debate, behaviour) explains the distinction
between the intention, interpretation, and implementation of a language
policy. It reviews, in detail, three recent major governmental language policy
declarations pertaining to the teaching of foreign and indigenous languages in
Australia (i.e. The National Statement and Plan for Languages of 2005, the
National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program of 2008, and the
National Indigenous Languages Policy of 2009), contextualizing them within
local political visions of the “new Australia” within the “Asian century” as
well as global trends in economic development and population movement.
Recurrent concepts such as “Asia literacy” (i.e. the idea that Australia is
part of Asia and needs to be in tune with regional concerns) and
“multiculturalism” (i.e. the notion that Australia is linguistically and
culturally diverse and should stay that way) are explored. The chapter also
discusses the language policy implications of the following: the Australia
2020 Summit of 2008, which sought to reconstruct Australia into a “new” nation
via economic renewal and regional integration; the White Paper on Australia in
the Asian Century of 2012, which focused on the harnessing of education and
culture to support regional “engagement”; and the National Curriculum of 2013,
which included all three language policies and prioritized the study of Asian
and indigenous languages and cultures. The chapter additionally examines the
many disincentives for language study in the “Anglosphere” and gives an
overview of the multi-strand methodology utilized in this study.

Chapter 2 (Australia’s Italian and Japanese) traces the history of foreign
language (FL) teaching in Australia, focusing on the most commonly taught
languages (i.e. Italian and Japanese) without neglecting the efforts to teach
Chinese, Indonesian, German, and French. The authors compare different
reactions to Italian, a “heritage” language with a strong immigrant community,
and Japanese, a trade language with vital regional economic importance. They
also explain the language teaching curriculum of the state of Victoria, which
has two dimensions (i.e. communication and cultural/linguistic awareness) and
two possible pathways (i.e. FL teaching beginning in elementary school and
continuing to year 10 versus FL teaching beginning and ending at the high
school level).

Chapter 3 (The research approach and the schools) describes the four schools
in lower to middle class neighborhoods of Melbourne, Victoria that were
studied between 2005 and 2011. It states the principal aims of the research,
namely: determining why the ambitious national language policies had such
uneven success; documenting the sociologies of Italian and Japanese in
Australia; providing evidence for how language policies played out in schools;
and investigating how student reactions could be made a vital component of
language policymaking. The chapter elucidates the research methodology which
wove together document analysis, analysis of public discourse, language
attitude surveys of teachers, students, and parents, student language
journals, focus group discussions, and Q-sorts (in which students were asked
to sort and rank 25 statements of opinion uttered by them during focus group
sessions). The chapter closes with a report of the quantitative results from
the surveys of the 147 primary school students and 648 secondary school
students who participated in the study.

Chapter 4 (Student subjectivity) is an in-depth analysis of the data from the
focus group discussions and the Q-sorts carried out by 48 of the most and the
least motivated students in the two high schools studied. The 25 statements of
opinion concerned teachers’ qualifications and classroom control capabilities,
the components of the FL curriculum, the value of learning other languages,
and students’ personal experiences while studying languages in school. Results
of the analysis indicated that students taking Italian considered that
learning Italian was “cool,” easier than Japanese, and useful for future jobs,
but they also felt the classes were too easy (“a bludge”), needed more
activities, and lacked genuine parental support. The students learning
Japanese were also convinced of the future practical utility of the language,
but wanted more cultural excursions and naturalistic communication
opportunities. Furthermore, they expressed concern about the Japanese
teachers’ quiet teaching styles, which often led to classroom chaos, the
overly rapid pace of lessons, and the compulsory nature of the courses, which
meant that otherwise unmotivated students dragged down the rest by their lack
of interest or ability in the language. In general, students of both languages
were very open in ‘talking back’ to the language policies (p. 120). While they
were supportive of the broad aims of the language program, they did not
consider that their language learning efforts were ultimately likely to be
successful. They called for more systematic and higher quality learning
experiences.

Chapter 5 (Pushing policy to be real) tries to account for the perceived
failure of foreign language teaching in Australia despite support from all
political parties, consistent funding, and lack of overt opposition from
teachers and parents. It utilizes an ecological model to demonstrate the
growing gulf between policymaking and policy implementation in Australia and
makes the point that the government needs to do much more to promote the value
of language learning among its citizenry, obtain the whole-hearted commitment
of teachers and students, increase continuity between primary and high school
FL training, and pay more attention to student views.

EVALUATION

This book will be a welcome resource for all those interested in the processes
of language planning and policymaking, including teachers of foreign or
indigenous languages, directors of bilingual schools, applied and educational
linguists, sociologists and anthropologists focused on educational settings,
micro-ethnographers, and curriculum designers in linguistically diverse
schools, as well as those scholars specifically interested in Australian
education or policymaking. While brief, it packs considerable useful
information into a very accessible and well-organized format and neatly
complements existing sources like McCarty (2010), Anderson (2009), and Heath,
Street, & Mills (2008).

Among the chief merits of the book are: (1) its careful historical analysis of
language policies promoted by different Australian Prime Ministers and how
they were interpreted by the general public and media; and (2) its
presentation of the relatively unknown methodology of Q-sorts, which utilizes
special software (PCQ) to do correlations and factor analysis of points of
view and shared beliefs, employing categories generated by the participants
rather than the researchers.

The only noticeable shortcomings were the brevity of the volume, which leaves
one hungry for more ethnographic details about the students and their
communities, and the lack of indication of the number of teachers (of foreign
languages and other content areas), administrators, and parents who
participated in the surveys. It would also have been good to have reported on
the reactions of each group of “stakeholders” to the study itself, thus giving
further voice to the ignored interpreters and targets of the language
policies.

The research carried out by Lo Bianco and Aliani has serious implications for
Australian and general language policymaking. The prime lessons to take away
from the book are that governments need to utilize trained language planners
to avoid facile solutions to complex language teaching problems and also need
to include teachers, students, and parents in the policymaking process. As Lo
Bianco and Aliani indicate: “If teachers and (especially) students withdraw
interest, withhold commitment, deny enthusiasm to the purposes of language
policy by ‘failing to learn’, then authoritative official texts, Prime
Ministerial White Papers and vigorous public discourse are made vulnerable to
‘catastrophic decline’” (p. 126).

This book should stimulate future language policy research in other countries
that are noticing major slippage between the goals of articulated policy and
actual classroom results (e.g. the United States and Britain). It should also
prove useful in further elaborating existing language planning theories or
models, since it stresses that there should be “constant iteration between
school and nation, policy and practice” (p. 132). Finally, it should be of
great assistance to language education planners who wish to democratize and
increase the efficacy of the planning process by integrating bottom-up
perspectives with top-down directives.

REFERENCES 

Anderson. Kimberly S. 2009.  War or common cause? A critical ethnography of
language education policy, race, and cultural citizenship. Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.

Heath, Shirley Brice, Street, Brian V., & Mills, Molly. 2008. On ethnography:
Approaches to language and literacy research. New York: Teachers College
Press.

McCarty, Teresa. 2010. Ethnography and language policy. New York: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Alicia Pousada received her M. A. and Ph. D. in Educational Linguistics from
the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1987, she has taught linguistics in the
English Department of the College of Humanities at the University of Puerto
Rico, Río Piedras. Her publications and presentations focus on language policy
and planning, multilingualism, and teaching of English as an Auxiliary
Language world-wide.








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