Neoliberal multiculturalism or self-destruction: The value of languages in the Australian school system — The Association Specialists
  1. Schedule
  2. SESSION 1: Translingual, immersion, heritage, and minority education
  3. Neoliberal multiculturalism or self-destruction: The value of languages in the Australian school system

Neoliberal multiculturalism or self-destruction: The value of languages in the Australian school system (20271)

Germana Eckert 1
  1. School of International Studies and Education, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

NSW government schools represent a melting-pot of Australian multiculturalism and multilingualism. While one third of the NSW population speak a language other than English at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021), almost 40% of students, including Indigenous students, are plurilingual (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2021).

This conference paper presents research into the approaches taken towards and value of languages and languaging practices in schools. Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992) of education department documents sheds light on the ways in which neoliberal approaches to multiculturalism (Kymlicka, 2013) pervade these dominant discourses. Alongside the document analysis, Bourdieusian (1982) analysis of interviews with international educators reveals the struggles in the field; the tensions between the teachers’ and students' capital as recognised by a neoliberal multiculturalism which normalises diversity, and a third space (Kramsch, 1993) where recognition of the importance of linguistic diversity and acceptance of multilingualism can “save the world from self-destruction” (Pattanayak, 2000, p. 47).

 

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). New South Wales 2021 Census All persons QuickStats. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/1

Bourdieu, P. (1982). Leçon sur la leçon [A lecture on the lecture]. Les Éditions de Minuit.

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2021). 2020 schools and students: statistical bulletin. https://data.cese.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/schools-and-students-statistical-bulletin/resource/16ce1fa6-442f-47db-9326-eb783b43e0e1

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Polity Press.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford University Press.

Kymlicka, W. (2013). Neoliberal multiculturalism. In A. H. Peter & L. Michèle (Eds.), Social resilience in the neo-liberal era (pp. 99-125). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Pattanayak, D. P. (2000). Linguistic pluralism: A point of departure. In R. Phillipson (Ed.), Rights to language: Equity, power, and education; Celebrating the 60th birthday of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (pp. 46–47). Lawrence Erlbaum.