Schooling within shifting langscapes: Educational responses in complex Indigenous language contact ecologies

Abstract

In the north-eastern Australian state of Queensland, the present day language ecologies of Indigenous peoples are characterised by language contact with English, a former colonial language and now the national standard, Standard Australian English (SAE). As with similar contexts throughout the Commonwealth, such language contact has generated English-lexified creoles and non-standard dialects of English which have become community vernaculars and the first languages of many Indigenous students. In classrooms in Queensland, where SAE is a dominant medium of instruction, the participation and achievement of students who speak these �contact varieties� can be enabled or obstructed, depending on whether their linguistic repertoires are acknowledged, harnessed and respectfully augmented in educational contexts, or not. Yet languages are typically not at the core of Indigenous education policy responses, and this �language invisibility� exacerbates a range of challenges for schooling in these complex linguistic contexts. This chapter therefore unpacks a set of �capacities� required by educators working in the �shifting langscapes� of Queensland. These capacities empower teachers to differentiate their curriculum delivery for the benefit of students with rich and complex contact language backgrounds by consciously and knowledgeably responding to students' linguistic repertoires in planning and teaching.