At GIER, we embrace and value the collaborative efforts of our members. This week’s blog has been written by two of our PhD students, Sammanie Kandambi and Sophia Takasu.
In Australia, the Curriculum learning area: Languages highlights the importance of multilingualism, second language acquisition, communication skills and intercultural capabilities for students in Foundation to Year 10. However, there is a lack of focus on multilingualism for all children within Early Childhood Education (ECE) given the exclusion of explicit mention of language education beyond the support of home languages and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in ECE policies. Two GIER doctoral students are arguing this with the focus of multilingualism for ALL children in Postgraduate Conference in Multilingualism hosted by Multilingualism research centre, Macquarie university, Australia on 02nd December 2023.
Sammanie Kandambi and Sophia Takasu are doing their PhD research on multilingualism in early childhood education, Sammanie with the focus on affective dimension of multilingual learning and Sophia with the focus of cultural diversity through multilingual learning at Griffith university. They both have multilingual backgrounds with languages other than English and also have professional experience in teaching foreign languages in Early childhood education, secondary education and tertiary education. Sammanie and Sophia have drawn attention to the policy analysis focusing on how multilingualism has been planned in Early childhood policies in this conference presentation as a part of their PhD thesis journey.
The conference presentation discusses how current ECE policies inadvertently disregard a substantial cohort of children who are monolingual and/or whose home language is English. By integration of focus on multilingualism for all children within early childhood policy frameworks, this research argues the prospect of acquiring an additional language can become more accessible for all children, including multicultural children who are “assumed” to have proficiency in a home language.
Sammanie explains the problem as follows:
When talking about multilingualism in Australia, 21% of the population speak a language other than English at home. To try to respond to the multilingual society, Australia’s educational systems have implemented language studies in formal schooling. Talking about early years, frameworks have also recognised the importance of meaningful communication in both English and home languages through the sense of belonging, being and becoming. Research has also shown that early years are the ideal time to foster languages learning, and language skills are crucial to the development of children’s identity, values, attitudes, awareness, empathy and respect. With that being said, it’s imperative for Australia to move away from the monolingual mindset which is limited to first language competency and increase awareness of the benefits of multilingualism.
Sammanie further explains:
Our working definition of multilingualism in our paper is the use of and communication with multiple languages within a community. When talking about multilingualism in Australia, 21% of the population speak a language other than English at home. Talking about early years, frameworks have also recognized the importance of meaningful communication in both English and home languages through the sense of belonging, being and becoming. Research have also argued that It’s imperative for Australia to move away from the monolingual mindset which is limited to first language competency and increase awareness of the benefits of multilingualism.
Sammanie and Sophia note that they explore two key ECEC policies: Belonging, Being & Becoming (2022), and Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guide (2023) in this research.
Sophia says: “We would like to note that, kindergarten in Queensland, Australia refers to early childhood education and both these policies are not curriculums, but just a framework and guideline on how to carry out early childhood education within Australian context.”
In their research, Sammanie and Sophia are using the two theories of Deleuze and Guattari’s new materialist theory and the Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. These theories are used to investigate novel perspectives of language education and its implications in early childhood education. Through the lens of these two theories, their research explores how a diffractive inquiry of ECE policies might encourage thinking about patterns of difference and their entanglements with matter and meaning and the effects of these differences in the context of languages education.
Sammanie explains:
As the diffractive analysis is not so common in language policy analysis, you might be wondering what it is… Since we are looking to produce data through the difference in between two policies, the diffractive analysis has been used in this research. When we looked at the policies thematically, we found that it was not enough because we are focusing on the patterns of differences related to how language is described in policies. So, we have chosen diffractive to help with looking at the differences and find the importance of languages learning in policies.
Sophia says:
The binaries that are reinforced in ECE policies including home language-multilingualism, responsiveness-awareness, belonging-identity have been diffractively analysed through the lenses of Bronfenbrenner and Deleuze and Guattari’s theories. Doing this is important as all children have the right to learn languages – it is about providing diverse, inclusive, and fair opportunities to all children.
Sammanie and Sophia say that, through their research, they highlight examples of multilingualism which resist the prevailing monolingual mindset in the aforementioned policies and support a more inclusive approach to additional languages education in ECEC. As such, their research attempts to contribute to the Languages planning in ECEC settings and offer guidance for designing effective Languages learning programs that meet the specific needs and developmental characteristics of young children.
Sammanie and Sophia are grateful for the immense support and guidance of one of our GIER member and their supervisor, Dr. Danielle H. Heinrichs. They are also thankful of their other supervisors – Dr. Adele Pavlidis, Prof. Donna Pendergast, and Dr. Michelle Ronksley-Pavia – in encouraging and supporting them to take on new opportunities and challenges in their HDR journey.
They say: “We both are really lucky to have supervisors who encourage us to take new opportunities and challenges specially in the early stage of PhD journey. Everyone has been very encouraging and supportive of this work. Danielle, our shared supervisor, provided constructive feedback for us from the writing abstract to the preparation conference presentation, and for this we are grateful.”
Listen to the conference presentation here: Presentation Recording-20231206_100404-Meeting Recording.mp4
