Where have all the reviews gone? A critical look at responses to the 2007 Review of teacher education for languages teachers

Abstract

Many reports over the past 40 years have investigated aspects of language education in Australia. While the majority of these reports have made recommendations to improve Australia's national language capability, few, if any, seem to have been implemented effectively. In this paper we attempt to gauge the impact of a 2007 Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) review of languages teacher education (Kleinhenz, Wilkinson, Gearon, Fernandez, and Ingvarson, 2007). To do this we obtained and analysed responses from the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments to which the recommendations of this review were addressed. While jurisdictions varied in the amount of detail they provided and in the way they engaged with our request, we were able to compare responses, identify trends, and highlight examples of good practice and innovative approaches. An unexpected finding was that the status of the review recommendations was a matter of some disagreement. An emerging trend of concern was the tendency to concentrate on initiatives related only to the Asian languages being promoted by the relatively short term National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP). This Asian language focus was not evident in the report. We hope that our results and discussion will inspire language teachers and system administrators in the various jurisdictions, be of use to the ACER, and stimulate further discussion about this important aspect of education in Australia.