Most Indigenous peoples live in urban and regional locations across Australia and no longer speak their traditional languages fluently. Instead contact languages, creoles and dialects, are widely spoken. In many educational settings, educators may know little about the first languages of the Indigenous children they teach, and not recognise these…

This chapter employs autoethnography to reflect upon the intersection of decolonization with Indigenous knowledge. It considers relational engagement with Indigenous people, land, and language, and summarizes the practice as "the courage to be altered."

Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English…

In this study, we explore how Aboriginal multilingual speakers use technology-enhanced environments, specifically Facebook, for their translanguaging practices. Using data collected from Facebook posts written by seven Aboriginal youth over a period of 18 months, we investigate how the participants move between Aboriginal English (AE) and Standard…

With a focus on Australian Aboriginal students, in this article we argue that translanguaging provides a useful resource for multilingual learners. We point out that although translanguaging is a relatively recent term, in Indigenous Australia is has been used consistently throughout the ages as people from different languages communicated with…

The transmission and dissemination of knowledge in Aboriginal societies for the most part occurs orally in an Aboriginal language or in Aboriginal English. However, whilst support is given to speaking skills in Indigenous communities, in our education system less emphasis is given to developing equivalent oral communicative competence in Standard…

As part of the "Bridging the Language Gap" project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be "invisible" in several key and self-reinforcing ways in school system data. A proliferation of inaccurate, illogical and incomplete data…

This article examines the issues surrounding the mapping of the oral language development of Standard Australian English (SAE) in the early school years of remote and very remote Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory (NT). Currently, teachers in this context have 2 mandated documents as guides that chart the development of SAE oracy.…

Colin Hearfield and Bob Boughton contend that, over roughly the past seventy-five years, a number of writers have attempted to underwrite the relationship between critical literacy and transformative social practice with an ethics of freedom and social justice. The first two such writers they address, Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire, draw on a…

All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia's "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN), the…

The influence of dialect on child speech assessment processes is important to consider in order to ensure accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention (teaching or therapy) for bidialectal children. In Australia, there is limited research evidence documenting the influence of dialectal variations on identification of speech impairment among…

On entering school, rural Australian children from Indigenous backgrounds are thrown into an unfamiliar environment, linguistically and culturally, which sets them up for failure. The author, working closely with elders and community in Alice Springs, has drawn on her considerable experience in both Indigenous education and TESOL to address this…

Vocational Education and Training (VET) in high schools has had positive effects on the retention of Indigenous students, providing important pathways into further education and the workforce. However, low-level literacy (and numeracy) skills can make successful completion difficult, especially for students who speak Standard Australian English as…

Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the…

This article examines the nature of oral language and representations used by teachers as they instruct young Indigenous Australian students at the beginning of formal schooling during play-based activities in mathematics. In particular, the use of Standard Australian English (SAE), the mathematical register used, and the interplay with…