Dodgy data, language invisibility and the implications for social inclusion: a critical analysis of student language data in the Queensland Education system.
Denise Angelo and Sally Dixon As part of the ‘Bridging the Language Gap’ project within Education Queensland, we have discovered that the language competencies of Indigenous students are ‘invisible’ in several key and self-reinforcing ways. For example, we found dramatic under-recording of students’ home language use, and status of English as a Second Language/Dialect (ESL/D) learners. Further, the NAPLAN standardised testing regime does not collect accurate or relevant information on students’ language repertoires, further presenting the student population as more monolingual than it is in reality (Lingard, Creagh & Vass 2011). We will discuss what we see as the reasons for this language invisibility, and the implications for the state’s social inclusion agenda.
Reference Lingard, B., S. Creagh. & G. Vass. 2011 Education policy as numbers: data categories and two Australian cases of misrecognition. Journal of Education Policy.

Denise Angelo is the manager of the Bridging the Language Gap Project within Education Queensland. Denise is an educator and linguist, based at the Far North Queensland Indigenous Schooling Support Unit in Cairns. Denise has worked with teams teaching traditional Aboriginal languages across northern Australia; training Aboriginal interpreters and translators; researching contact language varieties; and developing teaching approaches to support classroom learning in Standard Australian English (SAE) for Indigenous students with complex “contact language” backgrounds.

Sally Dixon is a professional mentor with the Bridging the Language Gap Project within Education Queensland. Sally is a linguist with interests in the areas of education, language acquisition, Australian and contact languages. Sally lectures in the Masters of Indigenous Languages in Education course at the University of Sydney and is undertaking PhD research at the Australian National University, investigating Aboriginal children’s interaction during play.