Comments on: Dodgy data and language misdiagnosis

By: Brendan Kavanagh

Brendan Kavanagh — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 01:55:00 +0000

Around one third of the Northern Territory’s population is Aboriginal, with many people living in remote communities. English is not the language of these communities. The clients at the shops, the clinic, the shire office all speak a different language, yet our lens for achievement is based purely on NAPLAN testing via the Closing the Gap report. There is no onus the visiting teachers or store managers to learn the local language, despite this being the language of the local economy.
There is also much hype around the success of the Literacy for Life foundation, which is highly present in the latest Closing the Gap report. While I respect their community controlled model, it should be noted that the communities that they have operated in are English speaking communities.

By: Sophia

Sophia — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:04:47 +0000

You are right in that educators and the general public often fail to acknowledge the need of a child to receive language support in order to achieve academically.

By: Ruslana Westerlund

Ruslana Westerlund — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 01:48:41 +0000

I know the US context for education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The issues raised in this blog resonate with the US context. Often the solutions that are provided to these learners are focused on remediation, decontextualized skill-based curriculum about which I wrote in my blog. Thank you for providing excellent research on matters of language and education.

By: What Does Language Have to Do with Social Justice? | Reclaiming The Language

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 03:29:37 +0000

[…] As educators work with language learners, the dimension of language in the social justice equation is of particular importance. Many language learners are placed in systems that ignore their language needs and instead, blame the kids for their socio-economic status or lack of parental involvement, and other excuses. The problem is not only inherent to the United States. A recent post I was reading from Australia nailed the issue in their article Dodgy Data and Language Misdiagnosis. […]