Understanding stories my way - The Department of Education

Transcription

“Understanding stories my way”:
Aboriginal-English speaking students’
(mis)understanding of school literacy
materials in Australian English
A Project of the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning
Department of Education
OCS037 | Understanding stories my way: Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English
© 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WA
Licensed for NEALS
TITLE: “Understanding stories my way”: Aboriginal-English speaking students’
(mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English
ISBN 978-1-74205-808-5
Reproduction of this work in whole or part for educational purposes, within an educational
institution and on condition that it is not offered for sale, is permitted by the Department
of Education.
This material is available on request in appropriate alternative formats including Braille, audio tape
and computer disk.
Further information please contact:
Institute for Professional Learning
Building B, SIDE
164-194 Oxford Street
LEEDERVILLE WA 6007
PO Box 455 LEEDERVILLE WA 6930
Phone: +61 (0)8 9242 6502
Fax:
+61 (0)8 9242 6395
Mobile: 0427 479 984
Email: [email protected]
Website: http//det.wa.edu.au/professionallearning/
“Understanding stories my way”:
Aboriginal-English speaking students’
(mis)understanding of school literacy materials
in Australian English
A Project of the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning,
funded by the Australian Research Council,
Department of Education (Western Australia), and Monash University
Farzad Sharifian, Adriano Truscott, Patricia Konigsberg,
Ian G Malcolm and Glenys Collard
CO N T E N T S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................4
FOREWORD..............................................................................................5
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................6
BACKGROUND..........................................................................................9
APPROACH and METHODOLOGY.......................................................... 22
CHAPTER II: FINDINGS........................................................................... 30
CHAPTER III: EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH...................................................... 59
REFERENCES........................................................................................... 97
APPENDICES......................................................................................... 108
3
Ackno
Acknowledg
wl edge
ements
ments
The authors of this report would sincerely like to thank and applaud the students,
teachers, Aboriginal Islander Education Officers and principals of the following
schools who participated in this project:
North Beach Primary School
Medina Primary School
Hudson Park Primary School
Roebourne District High School
Waddington Primary School
Koondoola Primary School
Albany Primary School
We are extremely grateful for their endless patience, energy and support. It was
a pleasure to work with them. We also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the
project workers/assistant researchers and colleagues who have provided valuable
advice and support along the way, in particular, Sally-Anna (Anna) Edwards, Coral
Brockman, Karen Cowie, Gloria McCallum, Nola Bell, Nicki Patterson, Caelene
Bartlett, Mark Bonshore, Vivienne Little, Rachel Gibson, Anne Garlett, Narelle
Ryder, Selina Collard, Majella Stevens, Dorothy O’Reilly, Jacqueline Williams, Allison
Heinritz, Kelly Bentley, Kathrin Dixon and Anne-Marie Frassica.
We would also like to especially thank Carol Garlett for her contribution and support.
Funding for the project reported upon here was provided by the Australian Research
Council Discovery Scheme [project number DP0877310], the Department of
Education (Western Australia), and Monash University.
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A word from Glenys Collard (Senior Consultant for Aboriginal English/ESL/ESD)
We did this research to help people understand the cultural differences in our
classrooms.
This report shows that some of our Aboriginal kids have a strong Aboriginal
worldview from a very young age. This is something that can’t be taken away and
it affects their learning.
As Aboriginal people we are not giving our knowledge away, but we are sharing
what we found in the classroom so it can be shared with teachers and other
students.
The knowledge in this research comes from the kids. We need to work to allow
our kids to use this and be able to feel like they can participate and share with
other people in the class.
We need support from the community to validate what our kids bring to school
so that schools are able to take these understandings into account.
Our long term aim is for our kids to participate equally in the classroom and for
all kids to be able to learn about each other, from each other … where we can
start at a similar place to others without having to give up one thing for another.
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Ch a p te r I: I nt r o d uction
Aims, significance and background
One of our kids got into big trouble for calling one of his classmates ‘horse’ but
in our home talk ‘horse’ means ‘smart’. (An Aboriginal or Islander Education
Officer.)
Anecdotes such as the above are evidence of miscommunication between
Aboriginal‑English speaking students and their non-Aboriginal classmates and
teachers. This is due to differences that exist between Aboriginal English and other
varieties of English spoken in Australia, including Australian English. But such
miscommunication does not stop at the level of conversation; it may extend to
Aboriginal students’ understanding of literacy materials used at school. That is, they
are likely to comprehend school literacy materials in terms of meanings in Aboriginal
English. This phenomenon, which may lead to alternative understandings of the
literacy materials provided, can be a significant factor contributing to Aboriginal
students’ lack of success at school. This project was an attempt to explore the
ways in which Aboriginal-English speaking students (mis)understand school-based
literacy materials written in Standard Australian English (SAE). The results will make a
significant contribution to Indigenous Education in Australia.
Significance of the project
Government reports, especially those published by the Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations, have consistently, as a matter of urgent
national priority, called for an improvement in educational opportunities and
outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Despite a huge investment in funding various
programs to alleviate this problem, the issue has remained unchanged, largely due to
insufficient interdisciplinary scholarly research into its cause. A major survey of child
health in Western Australia has called urgently for the need to establish research
into this area. It maintains:
A national research agenda into Aboriginal education outcomes should be
developed that establishes a systematic, rigorous and sustained programme
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aimed at both charting progress in achieving improved educational outcomes for Aboriginal
students and at developing and evaluating programmes and strategies that produce
measurable improvements (Zubrick et al., 2006, p. 4, Recommendations Booklet).
The project that is reported upon here was a direct response to the above call. It systematically
explores the degree to which Aboriginal English students (mis)understand literacy materials written
in Standard Australian English (SAE). The results will have important implications for curriculum
development and teacher education. The significance of this issue is a reflection of the fact that
the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) aims
to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous students while respecting Aboriginal English.
The ministerial position is clear from the following undertaking:
Ministers commit to make progress towards:
2.2. developing and fully implementing by 2012 educational programs for Indigenous children
that respect and value Indigenous cultures, languages (including Aboriginal English) and
contexts, explicitly teach standard Australian English and prepare children for schooling
(The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education, 2005–2008, p. iv).
Currently, Aboriginal students are caught in a pincer. There is significant miscommunication
between them and their non-Aboriginal teachers on the one hand (e.g., Harris & Malin, 1994;
Sharifian et al., 2004; Lowell & Devlin, 1998; Malin, 1990), and lack of transparency in the literacy
materials to which they are exposed on the other hand (Malcolm et al., 2002). This is due to the
differences that exist between Aboriginal English and Australian English, assumed to be the only
correct form of English by most non-Aboriginal teachers. The same SAE is also used in school
literacy materials (e.g., Christie & Harris, 1985). The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education
(2005–2008) recognises the validity of this observation by referring to the work of the team
members as follows:
The literature also shows that standard Australian English spoken by Indigenous students
frequently shows evidence of conceptual features that are not shared with non-Indigenous
speakers; Aboriginal English shows itself at the level of conceptualization even when it is not
so apparent at the level of linguistic form. See, for example, the extensive body of work by Ian
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G Malcolm as well as recent work by Sharifian, ‘Cultural conceptualisations in English words:
A study of Aboriginal children in Perth’ (The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education,
2005–2008, p. 15).
What is now needed is a systematic exploration of the differences that exist between the
conceptual base that many Aboriginal-English speaking students draw on and the one that
underlies the literacy materials that are used at school. The results will then need to be fed into
every aspect of teacher education and curriculum development for Aboriginal students. Since the
mid 1990s, the Department of Education, Western Australia, has been running a program called the
ABC of Two-Way Literacy for Aboriginal English Speakers, to support research on Aboriginal English
and also to promote an understanding of this dialect among educators of Aboriginal students. The
ABC program has received support, on several occasions, from Australian Research Council (ARC).
The project reported upon here was carried out as part of the ABC program, further exploring the
conceptualisations that Aboriginal students bring to school and engage, making their own sense of
the school-based literacy materials written in SAE.
8
B ac kgr oun d
Aboriginal students have a right to quality education that gives them the skills
for full participation in Australian society. However, in the past 30 years the
education system has failed to improve literacy outcomes for the vast majority of
Aboriginal‑English speaking students. This failure affects all aspects of Indigenous
people’s lives, including their health, and has led to social problems of different
kinds. Dockett, Mason, and Perry (2006, p. 139) observe that “Aboriginal people
have been described as the most educationally disadvantaged group of people
within Australia”.
The existence of “non-standard” dialects has of course presented challenges and
dilemmas for educational programs worldwide (e.g., Heath, 1983; Siegel, 2006;
Smitherman, 2000; Nero, 2006; Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999). Issues in this
area range from miscommunication to the stigmatisation of students’ languages and
the marginalisation of the students themselves. In Australia, speakers of Aboriginal
English have been seriously affected by the differences that exist between their
dialect and the SAE promoted by the education system.
A recent large-scale investigation into the health, wellbeing and education of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 0 to 17 years has presented
confronting evidence about the failure of the education system to improve the
educational outcomes of the vast majority of Aboriginal school children (Zubrick
et al., 2006). For instance, the survey states that “57% of Aboriginal students display
low academic performance compared with 19% of non-Aboriginal students – a
disparity of 38 percentage points” (Zubrick et al., 2006; Summary booklet, p. 26).
The survey also maintains that “no obvious progress has been made over the last
thirty years to effectively close the disparities in academic performance” (p. 2).
The survey has found relationships between the academic performance of Aboriginal
children and other issues such as the level of education of the primary carer, poor
school attendance, the students’ degree of risk of developing clinically significant
emotional or behavioural difficulties, and trouble getting enough sleep. Another
factor that correlated with academic performance and school attendance was the
language or variety of language spoken by the Aboriginal children at home.
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Aboriginal English carries with it distinctive linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and conceptual
characteristics (e.g., Eades, 1982, 1988, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000; Eagleson, Kaldor, &
Malcolm, 1982; Harkins, 1990, 1994, 2000; Malcolm, 1977, 1982, 1994a, 1994b, 2000, 2001a,
2001b; Malcolm et al., 1999; Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997; Sharifian, 2006).
For many Indigenous people, Aboriginal English is the first-learned form of English, and for
the great majority it is the form which carries their distinctive identity as Indigenous people.
It also encodes conceptualisations and schemas that are largely derived from Aboriginal cultural
experiences (e.g., Malcolm & Rochecouste, 2000; Malcolm & Sharifian, 2002; Sharifian, 2001,
2002a, 2002b, 2005; Sharifian & Malcolm, 2003; Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004). Before
presenting the methodology and findings, the following section provides some background on the
notion of “schema”, which is the main analytical tool used in the study reported here, as it has
been in earlier studies on this issue.
Schema theory
The notion of schema has proved to be of a very high explanatory power across various disciplines
such as cognitive science, education, artificial intelligence, cognitive anthropology and linguistics
over the last century (e.g., Bartlett, 1932; Bobrow & Norman, 1975; D’Andrade, 1995; Holland &
Cole, 1995; Minsky, 1975; Rumelhart, 1980; Sharifian, 2001; Strauss & Quinn, 1997). The term
“schema” was first used by Emanuel Kant (1787/1963). For Kant, schemas were general rules or
procedures of imagination by which an image is procured for a concept. In this sense, schemas
build a bridge between the image and the general idea (Van de Vijver, 1990).
The definition of schema is variable and largely depends on views held concerning the nature of
mental representations and, in general, the nature of human cognition. It seems that every new
paradigm and every sub-discipline in cognitive science provides its own interpretation of the notion
of schema. The multiplicity in the interpretation of the term is clearly captured in Reber’s (1985)
definition of schema in his Penguin Dictionary of Psychology:
A plan, an outline, a structure, a framework, a program, etc. In all these meanings the
assumption is that the schemas are cognitive, mental plans that are abstract and that serve
as guides for action, as structures for interpreting information, as organized frameworks for
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solving problems.
In cognitive studies, schema theory has enjoyed considerable popularity for both classicism and
connectionism (Rumelhart, 1980; Rumelhart et al., 1986; Schank & Abelson, 1977). Connectionists
define schemas as patterns of activation among strongly interconnected units in the human
memory network. Rumelhart et al. maintain that “[I]t is these coalitions of tightly interconnected
units that correspond most closely to what have been called schemas” (p. 20).
Schemas serve different functions in the interaction between cognition and the environment.
Taylor and Crocker (1981) have identified seven functions of schemas:
a. Providing a structure against which experience is mapped
b. Directing information encoding and retrieval from memory
c. Affecting the efficiency and speed of information processing
d. Guiding the filling of any gaps in the information available
e. Providing templates for problem solving
f. Facilitating the evaluation of experience
g. Facilitating anticipations of the future, specifically goal setting, planning and goal execution.
The concept of schema underlies other terms such as script, frame, global concept, scenario,
encyclopedic entry and plan as they are used in cognitive studies. Several classifications of schemas
have also been proposed. Cook (1994) makes a distinction between three types of schemas: world
schema, text schema and language schema. Cook uses “world schema” to refer to the schematic
organisation of world knowledge and “text schema” to refer to “a typical ordering of facts in a real
or fictional world” (p. 15). “Language schema” refers to generalised knowledge about the grammar
of a language.
Derry (1996) identifies three classes of schemas in the literature: memory objects, mental models,
and cognitive fields. A memory object is “a schema type that includes but is not limited to Piagetian
logical-mathematical schemes” (Derry, 1996, p. 167). Derry states that mental models “represent
situational understandings that are context dependent and do not exist outside the situation
being modelled” (p. 167). The definition of cognitive field given by Derry matches a connectionist’s
interpretation of schemas as distributed patterns of activation that occur in response to
external stimuli. It seems that these different schema types are, in fact, no more than different
interpretations of the same cognitive entity.
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In an intercultural study, Nishida (1999) extracts eight primary types of schemas for social
interactions as follows:
1. Fact-and-concept schemas: these are schemas that include factual information such as
“The capital of Australia is Canberra”, or conceptual information such as “A room has walls”.
2. Person schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about types of people,
including their personality traits, represented by sentences such as “John is taciturn”.
3. Self schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about the social self and the
individual self.
4. Role schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about achieved and ascribed
social roles and the expected behaviour associated with these roles.
5. Context schemas: these are schemas that include knowledge about situations and
appropriate behaviour associated with them.
6. Procedure schemas: these are schemas that contain knowledge about the appropriate
sequences of events in frequently encountered situations.
7. Strategy schemas: these schemas include knowledge about problem-solving strategies.
8. Emotion schemas: these schemas contain information about effect and evaluation. Emotion
schemas have been shown to be activated through their association with other schemas.
Thus far, it is apparent that many of the schema types that have been discussed in the literature
have been classified on the basis of content orientation. A major problem with this kind of labelling
is the risk of an ever-expanding taxonomy. If schemas are classified according to the content
of human experience, which is potentially unlimited, the need for further labels may never be
satisfied. Another potential problem is labelling the same content or experience differently,
and therefore coming up with taxonomies of schemas that contain overlapping or redundant
categories.
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Culture and schemas
Schema theory provides a useful tool in studies of cognition, language and culture since it enables
a theoretical interface between cognition, culture and language (e.g., D’Andrade, 1995; Holland &
Cole, 1995; Malcolm & Sharifian, 2002; Rice, 1980; Sharifian, 2002a, 2002b; Shore, 1996; Strauss
& Quinn, 1997). It is generally agreed that schemas are cognitive phenomena that can be derived
from cultural experience and that are instantiated and embodied in linguistic expression (Sharifian,
2001).
Strauss and Quinn (1997) elaborately discuss cultural schemas within the framework of the
connectionist paradigm in cognitive science. As mentioned earlier, connectionists consider
schemas as patterns of activation among strongly interconnected units in the human memory
network. Strauss and Quinn (1997) believe that, to the extent that they are not predetermined
genetically, schemas are cultural (p. 7).
Sharifian (2011) offers a perspective on the notion of cultural schema that complements current
thinking in cognitive anthropology. This perspective draws on a view of cognition that is broader
than viewing schema as simply residing in the mind of an individual. His view is paralleled by those
of a number of other scholars (e.g., Cole, 1996; D’Andrade, 1995; Hutchins, 1995; Shore, 1996;
Strauss & Quinn, 1997). Hutchins, for instance, maintains that “culture, context, and history … are
fundamental aspects of human cognition and cannot be comfortably integrated into a perspective
that privileges abstract properties of isolated individual minds” (1994, p. 354). Similarly, within
the perspective of Sharifian’s theoretical model of cultural conceptualisations and language,
cognition is viewed as a property of not just individuals but also cultural groups. The minds of the
members of a cultural group appear to provide a network, collectively, in which representations
of cultural knowledge are instantiated. Therefore, culture needs to be viewed as more than just
a system of knowledge; it is a level of representation. Such a view further legitimises the concept
including cognitive anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, linguists, etc. under the umbrella term
“cognitive science”.
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If this view regarding cognition and culture is found to be legitimate, cognitive scientists will
need to explore how cultural knowledge is represented not only at the individual level, but at
the cultural level of cognition: how it is represented in the network formed by the minds of the
members of a cultural group. This question has so far been implicitly addressed by questions such
as to what degree cultural schemas are shared. Often, scholars working in this area have described
cultural schemas as being “shared”, “inter-subjectively shared”, or “widely shared”. It needs to be
highlighted that cultural schemas are not equally imprinted in the minds of the individual members
of a cultural group. Some individuals have access to some schemas that other individuals do not.
In this way, schemas are represented in a distributed fashion across the minds in a cultural group
(Sharifian, 2003, 2008, 2011). This view is further elaborated below.
Cultural schemas as distributed representations
Sharifian (2011) views cultural schemas to be constantly emerging from the interactions between
the members of a cultural group. These schemas are dynamic conceptualisations that are
“negotiated” and “renegotiated”, so to speak, between the members and are passed on to newer
generations. Cultural schemas encompass cultural concepts, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values
and norms that lay the foundation for human reasoning within different cultures.
The notion of “distributed representation” is used in cognitive science to describe how knowledge
is represented in the human mind. Van Gelder observes that the idea of distributed storage of
knowledge, as opposed to local storage, in the brain dates back to the 19th century. He notes that
the rise of connectionism generated new interest in a range of technical and philosophical issues
related to the notions of distributed and local representation. He further notes that the dichotomy
between local and distributed has been used in many different ways, often vaguely and/or
ambiguously. Van Gelder (1999) notes, for example, that in one interpretation, two or more items
may be viewed as being simultaneously represented by one and the same distributed pattern.
According to a different interpretation, a single item may be viewed as represented by a pattern
over a pool of units.
Beyond the level of the individual, notions of distributed representation have been used by
Hutchins and his colleagues, for about three decades now, to encompass interactions between
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people and people’s interaction with resources and materials in the environment (e.g., Hutchins &
Klausen, 1996). According to this theory of cognition, cognitive processes are viewed in terms of
the functional relationships among the participating elements in the process, whether or not these
elements reside in humans or in the environment. A major breakthrough produced by this view
of cognition is the treatment of culture as playing a major role in human cognition (e.g., Hutchins,
1995). On one hand, culture emerges from social, mental and material activities while on the other
hand, culture shapes the cognitive processes that are distributed over the agents, artefacts and
environments of a cultural group.
In regard to cultural schemas, it should be stressed again that these schemas are not completely
or equally shared by all the members of any cultural group. In reality, people may share some
elements, but not others, from any cultural schema. Swartz (1991) repeatedly highlights this
point in his treatment of the world of the Mombasa Swahili. Swartz notes that “cultural elements
are unevenly distributed even among those who are directly affected by them” (1991, p. 271).
However, he notes that “[l]ess than universal sharing of elements within a group is not necessarily
a hindrance to the effectiveness of those elements or of the culture as a whole” (p. 271). This
incomplete sharing of cultural schemas may best be captured by the notion of heterogeneously
distributed representation (Sharifian, 2011), which views cultural schemas as being represented
in a distributed fashion across the minds of networked individuals in a cultural group. The notion
of distributed representation here denotes a configuration that is represented in the following
diagram from Sharifian (2011, p. 6):
Distributed, Emergent Cultural Cognition
A B C D E
BC
D
BC
DE
AB
DE
AD
E
AB
CD
CD
AC
DE
CD
E
AB
D
BC
E
BD
E
A
15
It should be noted here that the simple network modelled above is not to be taken as a
reductionist attempt to model the relationship between culture and cognition. It is simply meant
to provide an anchor point to help one picture cultural schemas as they may be represented at the
group level. However, the model does challenge those who present culture as being equally shared
by all the members of a cultural group. It is not uncommon to hear proposals involving a “common
core” of cultural knowledge from those who hold a view that schemas are homogeneously
distributed. In fact, this is the most common assumption on the basis of which people engage in
interaction and does not appear to have a real counterpart in a culture as a whole.
The diagram depicts a cultural schema as a collective, emergent property of the network that is
composed of the minds of the people in a cultural group. It can be seen that units in the network
may share one, two, or more elements from a cultural schema and these shared configurations are
not the same for all the units in the network. That is, two units may share A and B but not C and D,
while two other units may share C and D but not A and B. Thus, the units might be different from
each other in terms of what they share and how much they share with others. Some pairs of units
may not even share one element from this schema, but may, nevertheless, still be considered to be
members of the same cultural group due to their sharing elements from other cultural schemas.
As for the factors responsible for whether elements of a cultural schema are shared or not shared,
demographic factors like age, gender and education are likely to make a contribution.
It is to be noted here that patterns of overlap between different people’s knowledge of a cultural
schema, or the coherence of their knowledge, may vary across different cultures. That is, cultural
schemas may be represented more coherently across one cultural group than another. This
coherence indicates various factors such as the integrity, uniformity and solidarity of cognitive
systems and sub‑systems across the target cultural group. Thus, we may expect less coherent
cultural schemas in cultures where people lead rather individualistic lives.
To understand the model, neither the individual units nor the cultural schema as a whole should
be taken as static entities with fixed contents. As mentioned above, people “negotiate” and
“renegotiate” cultural schemas in their constant interactions through space and time, and this
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means both the individual units and the cultural schemas are dynamic in terms of their content.
However, it should not be assumed that all cultures necessarily undergo changes in their schemas
at the same rate. Various factors such as technological advancements and contact with other
cultures may in practice determine the degree to which cultural schemas change. As for the
individual members of a cultural group, again, issues such as education and a change in age may
lead to a change in one’s schemas.
Cultural schemas may be instantiated in various cultural activities and artefacts. All levels of
language, for example, may be used to instantiate cultural schemas (Palmer, 1996; Malcolm &
Sharifian, 2002; Sharifian, 2001). Non-verbal aspects of communication and even silence may
reflect conceptualisations that are culture specific. Cultural schemas may also surface in various
forms of art, such as painting and even dance. Schema instantiation in this sense refreshes,
reinforces, maintains and expands cultural schemas. The following section presents a brief review
of some previous studies that explore the cultural schemas held by Aboriginal-English speaking
students.
Research on cultural conceptualisations and schemas in
Aboriginal English
A pioneering study into the conceptual basis of Aboriginal English was undertaken by Malcolm
and Rochecouste (2000). They analysed a sub-corpus of Aboriginal-English texts to identify the
event and story schemas that formed the experiential basis of these texts. They observed that the
majority of the texts analysed appeared to be associated with schemas that were derived from
Aboriginal experiences of travelling and hunting, as well as with spiritual experiences of Aboriginal
speakers. In particular, the majority of the texts appeared to be associated with the following
schemas:
• Travel schema – the representation of the experience of known participants, organised in
terms of alternating travelling (or moving) and with stopping segments, usually referenced
to a time of departure and optionally including a return to the starting point (see Malcolm,
1994a, for more details).
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• Hunting schema – the representation of experience of known participants, organised
with respect to the observation, pursuit and capture of prey, usually entailing killing and
sometimes eating the prey. Success is usually associated with persistence expressed with
repeated and/or unsuccessful hunting activities (e.g. shooting and missing, looking and
never finding). There are a number of sub-schemas associated with hunting, including
Cooking, Fishing and Spotting the prey.
• Observing schema – the representation of experience, usually shared, in terms of observed
details, whether of natural or social phenomena.
• Scary Things schema – the representation of experience, either first-hand or vicarious, of
strange powers or persons affecting normal life within the community and manifest in the
description of appearances and disappearances, or seeing or not seeing/finding evidence of
the spiritual phenomenon in question.
Sharifian (2001) observed that Aboriginal-English speakers often operate on the basis of widely
shared schemas and thus do not find it necessary to produce lexically and structurally complex
utterances when referring to experiences that touch on them. Sharifian (2002b) observed that
Aboriginal-English narratives do not seem to rely on clock-and-calendar timeframes to establish
an anchor point in the discourse. Instead, the narrative tends to revolve around a place or event
of significance. A good number of the texts in Aboriginal English that that have been analysed
begin with utterances such as In Geraldton …, or It was in Nanna’s funeral … These features are
in consonance with Aboriginal cultural experience in which time spent in one’s “country”, in the
Aboriginal sense, or events such as one’s grandmother’s funeral, hold much more significance than
a chained sequence of experiences organised according to a linear conception of time.
Sharifian (2002a, 2005, 2008) developed a data collection technique that qualitatively
explores patterns of wood‑association responses for what they reflect about the underlying
conceptualisations, such as schemas, that speakers draw upon. Data collected using a list of
everyday words such as “family” and “home” from two groups of Aboriginal and Anglo‑Australian
students revealed differences as well as similarities in the chain of responses evoked. For example,
for Aboriginal students the word “family” appeared to be associated with categories in Aboriginal
18
English that move far beyond what is described as the “nuclear” family, which is the central notion
in Anglo-Australian culture. Consider the following table of data from Sharifian (2002a):
Aboriginal
Anglo-Australian
Stimulus word: Family
Stimulus word: Family
• Love your pop, love your nan, love our
mums, love our dads.
• Brothers, sisters, aunnie, uncles, nan,
pops, father, nephew and nieces.
• They’re there for you, when you need
‘m they look after you, you call ‘m
aunie and uncle an cousins.
• People, mums, dads, brother, group of
families, like aunties and uncles nanas
and pops.
• I’ve got lots of people in my family, got
a big family, got lots of family.
• My family, you know how many family
I got? One thousand millions, hundred
ninety-nine million thousand thousand
nine nine sixty-one … million million,
uncle, Joe, Stacy, … cousins, uncles,
sisters, brothers, girlfriends and my
million sixty-one thousand family
• I like my family, all of my family, my
aunties an’ uncles and cousins, and I
like Dryandra.
• Just having family that is Nyungar [an
• You got brothers and sisters in your
family and your mum and dad, and you
have fun with your family, have dinner
with your family, you go out with your
family.
• Dad, mum, brother, dog.
• Mum, and dad, brother and sister.
• Fathers, sisters, parents, caring.
• People, your mum and dad, and your
sister and brother.
• All my family, my brothers and sisters,
my mum and my dad.
• Kids, mums, dads, sisters, brothers.
• Mother, sister, brother, life.
• Mum, dad, my brother.
• I think of all the people in my family
[F: Who are they? I: My mum, my dad,
an my sister]
• They have a house, they have a car,
they have their kitchen, their room,
their toilet, their backyard, their
carport, they have a dog and a cat.
Aboriginal cultural group] and meeting
each other
The responses given by Aboriginal participants refer to members of their extended family, such
as aunts and uncles, and as such they instantiate the Aboriginal cultural schema of Family.
19
The responses from the Anglo-Australian participants suggest that the word “family” is in most
cases restricted to a schema that includes the members of what is described as a “nuclear family”,
while sometimes including pets kept in the house.
Responses such as they’re there for you, when you need ’m they look after you by Aboriginal
participants reflect responsibilities of care between the members of an extended family. Uncles
and aunties often play a large role in an individual’s upbringing. The closeness of an Aboriginal
person to his or her extended family members is also reflected in the patterns of responses where
the primary responses refer to uncles and aunties or nana and pop instead of father and mother.
Responses such as my million sixty-one thousand family and I’ve got lots of people in my family
reflect the extended coverage of the concept of “family” in the Aboriginal conceptualisation.
The word “home” appeared to be mainly associated with family relationships rather than a building
used as a dwelling by a nuclear family.
The precursor to the study proposed here was a recent project (Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm,
2004; Sharifian, Malcolm, Rochecouste, Königsberg, & Collard, 2005), funded by the Department
of Education in Western Australia, which explored the schemas that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
educators bring to the task of comprehending oral narratives produced by Aboriginal children.
During each data collection session, each participant was asked to respond to a series of eight
narratives, which were selected from the Corpora of Aboriginal English, and then recall each
narrative immediately after listening to it. The narratives were orally produced by a number of
Aboriginal students and came from data collected in previous projects.
The data were then analysed in three stages. The first stage involved the analysis of recalls into
smaller meaning units, called idea units. This was carried out to examine the content schemas that
were employed by the participants in comprehending the original narratives. The second stage was
a comparison of the rhetorical organisation, or formal schemas, of the original narratives and the
recalls by the participants. Finally, the recalls by Aboriginal participants were examined to see if
they reflected any general interpretive patterns.
To carry out an idea-unit analysis of the recalls, the original narratives first needed to be analysed
for the idea units they included. Overall, it was possible to observe a continuum of familiarity
20
on the part of participants with the schemas that appeared to underlie the narratives. A good
number of the recall protocols by non‑Aboriginal participants suggested a bottom-up approach to
comprehending discourse, in the sense that they generally recalled the minimal elements of the
original narratives, and used these as they attempted to reassemble the narrative. Consider the
following example:
There was somebody and they smelt petrol gas or something, someone cooking in the kitchen…
Some non-Aboriginal participants appeared to rely on their own individual and cultural schemas,
which appeared to be different from the ones that were associated with the original stories, in
comprehending the texts and thus produced information that had not been present in the original
narratives. For example, in responding to a narrative about hunting a kangaroo, one teacher
described the hunters as being in a cave, when no cave had been mentioned in the original
narrative. This kind of reconstruction is an indication of unfamiliarity with the cultural schemas that
informed the original narratives.
The results of the analysis of rhetorical organisation, or “formal schema analysis”, revealed that
the original narratives did not always rely on the chronological ordering of events and that some
participants in fact showed a reordering of the passages in their recall. The recalls by Aboriginal
participants revealed a tendency towards a holistic and top-down approach, often elaborating on
the cultural schema that was reflected in the original narratives to assist the comprehension of the
non-Aboriginal listener. For example, an Aboriginal listener began his response to a hunting story
by starting with the words “like most of us do”.
As mentioned above, the findings of the study suggested non-Aboriginal teachers had different
degrees of familiarity with the schemas that informed the Aboriginal-English narratives. Inasmuch
as these findings may be representative of what happens in real classroom situations, they reveal
there is a significant potential for miscommunication between Aboriginal students and those
non‑Aboriginal teachers that are not familiar with these schemas.
In the current project, the role of the participants was reversed. This time, Aboriginal students
listened to stories read aloud by their teachers from story books and then they each produced
a recall of these stories. The aim was to explore the schemas that Aboriginal children employ in
making sense of such stories.
21
Ap pr oac h an d Met h o d o logy
Research approach
Although the issues related to the use of “non-standard” varieties in education have
received some attention worldwide (see Siegel, 2006), there have been very few
empirical studies addressing the acquisition of standard varieties by “non-standard”
speakers. This study and its precursor are innovative in that they employ the
analytical tools of cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology within the general
framework of sociocultural approaches to language in order to provide a deeper
understanding of Aboriginal children’s approach to literacy learning and the general
relationship between language, culture and conceptualisation.
To date, the issues of non-standard dialect speakers have fallen under
sociolinguistics, and there has been little interest in pursuing the issue from a
cognitive perspective. This has partly been due to the narrowness of the frameworks
that have been applied to human cognition, which have not paid due attention
to sociocultural foundations of human cognition. On the other hand, studies of
Indigenous education worldwide have often distanced themselves from disciplines
such as linguistics and have mainly focused on identifying general factors that
contribute to poor academic performance on the part of Indigenous students,
such as health and socioeconomic conditions. This general lack of communication
between disciplines in relation to the issues facing Indigenous students in
educational systems has not helped alleviate the problems and lead to better
outcomes.
This study brings to the issue of Indigenous education a framework informed by
recent advances in cognitive linguistic studies that view sociocultural factors as
fundamental to human cognition and learning. This emerging field is variously
referred to as applied cultural linguistics (Sharifian & Palmer, 2007), and cognitive
sociolinguistics (Kristiansen & Dirven, 2008). The analytical tools that have been used
in this general area have now been used in studies of second language teaching and
intercultural communication in other linguistic contexts, such as Chinese, Japanese,
African English and Arabic (see studies in Sharifian & Palmer, 2007).
22
The current study and its immediate precursor also developed a rigorous methodology which
employs the data analysis technique of “idea-unit” analysis in exploring the schemas as they are
reflected by a speaker’s recall of a text. In other words, the study develops a novel framework that
makes use of a rigorous text-analysis technique in analysing the cultural–conceptual foundation of
an indigenised dialect of English for a sociolinguistically oriented objective.
Participants
The Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers, who collected the data, were part of the ABC of
Two‑Way Literacy and Learning program of the Western Australian Department of Education (DoE)
and Monash University.
The schools
Ethics approval was obtained from Monash University and permission was given by the Western
Australian DoE to approach the schools. School selection was based on the proportion of the
population of students identified as Aboriginal and on the willingness of school leadership to be
participating in the research.
Each school was asked to provide an Aboriginal or Islander Education Officer (AIEO) to assist in the
research. Their presence was mainly for the benefit of the Aboriginal students and in particular
they were able to take on roles of:
• providing vital background information on the students as the AIEOs were familiar with
them (Appendix 1)
• advising on the interpretation of aspects of the recalls
• sitting with the Aboriginal students to help them feel comfortable, providing support if
needed.
Staff
A non-Aboriginal project teacher was employed to read pre-selected stories to the students in a
manner consistent with general classroom practice. That is, the narrative would be read to the
student, and the student would be asked questions and allowed to make comments following
23
the reading. This individual project teacher was used in most cases, depending on the location of
the school. When she was not available, an alternative teacher was sourced.
The teachers and AIEOs of the selected schools were consulted over which students were likely to
show willingness to participate in the study. Schools were provided with relief teachers if needed.
A Student Background form was developed by the research team to brief all concerned to the
point of having a detailed understanding of the students’ sociocultural influences and academic
and behavioural patterns (see Appendix 1). The AIEO of each school was asked to fill out a Student
Background form for each student (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) and these were discussed with
the researchers. Consent was sought from the students, their parents and the school principal.
All parties were offered the right of withdrawal from the study and were assured confidentiality in
regard to the dissemination of the data.
Students
Two experimental groups were used to provide a basis of comparison: Aboriginal and nonAboriginal students. Forty-four Aboriginal and 20 non-Aboriginal students in Years Four and Five
(aged from nine to 11 years) were asked to participate in the study from seven primary schools
across Western Australia (five were in the metropolitan area of Perth and two were in rural areas).
Instrument
The five source texts used for the study were selected by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators
and represented a range of child fiction genres identified as frequently used at these schools.
The stories were varied in terms of genre and cultural underpinnings. They are listed as follows:
1. Fairytale (non-Aboriginal perspective): Puss in Boots by Frances Sargent Osgood (1842).
2. Aboriginal Australian folklore: Magic Colours by Cecilia Egan (1999).
3. Non-Aboriginal fables: The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack (1933).
4. Non-Aboriginal fiction: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat by Jenny Wagner & Ron
Brooks (1978).
5. Realistic fiction: Bushfire by Marguerite Hann Syme (2000).
24
Procedure
1) Pilot
A pilot study was carried out to ascertain the best procedure that would:
• help the student to feel at ease
• give the student a break between the storytelling and the recall stages
• determine the most appropriate non-linguistic interpolated task
• ensure that students would not talk to each other (or conduct any form of internal
monologue) about any of the stories.
2) Main study
The participants conducted the storytelling and recall sessions in the form of an informal
one‑to‑one interview (with the AIEO seated next to the student for support). The students were
not allowed to see the book or the images therein, thereby encouraging them to rely only on their
own conceptualisations as these were evoked directly from the verbal storytelling. While it may be
normal classroom practice to share the images with the students, this method would encourage
more reliance on cultural conceptualisations generated by the written text.
The agreed procedure was as follows:
1. The teacher reads the story to the first student in a one-to-one interaction. No images are
shown (see Photo 1).
2. The student then goes to a separate room to engage in an interpolated task, which does not
encourage or facilitate reflection on the story.
3. The student returns to the interview room for recall after between five and 10 minutes.
4. When the student is finished, the teacher is encouraged to prompt for more information.
If the student has nothing to say, the teacher could prompt with questions like,
“What happened after X?”, “Did you like the story?”, and “Why?”.
5. End of interview.
25
6. The same procedure was then followed for all the other students in turn.
7. The next text was read at the following session.
Photo 1: The storytelling session
Data analysis
The selected texts and recall interview transcripts were analysed based on the recall analysis
model developed in Sharifian et al. (2004). Coding was conducted by a panel of Aboriginal and
non‑Aboriginal researchers and assistants.
The recall protocols produced by the participants were analysed in terms of their “idea units”
(e.g., Johns & Mayes, 1990; Ross et al., 2005). Ross et al. (2005, p. 1178) define an idea unit
as “a phrase that communicates one complete idea, action, thought, feeling, or detail”. The
aim of idea‑unit analysis was to investigate the content schemas that participants employ in
comprehending the original stories. First, the idea units in the original stories were identified.
Johns and Mayes’ classification (detailed in Table 1) was used to discern the idea units in this study.
This classification is based on Kroll’s (1977) system, and includes some additions by Carrell (1985).
26
• A main clause is counted as one idea including (when present) a direct object, an adverbial
element and a mark of subordination.
• Full relative and adverbial clauses are counted as one idea unit.
• Phrases, excluding “transitional” ones, which occur in sentence initial position followed
by a comma or phrases which are set off from the sentence with commas are counted as
separate idea units.
• Reduced clauses of various types, including most gerundives and infinitival constructives,
are separate idea units.
• Post-nominal –ing phrases used as modifiers are counted as one idea unit (for example,
So animals just remain in the water, dying).
• In a clause with a compound verb, the second verb phrase is counted as a separate idea unit.
Multiple subjects and multiple direct objects also indicate separate idea units.
• Other types of elements counted as individual idea units are:
Absolutes: for example, Its concern heightened, the government will urge industries to
improve.
Appositives: A major type of pollution, thermal pollution, is discussed in this article.
Table 1: Idea Unit Classification
(Source: Johns & Mayes, 1990, p. 258)
27
The recall analysis sheet
To compare the idea units recalled by the participants with the idea units in the original stories, the
following scale from Sharifian, Rochecouste and Malcolm (2004) was used:
Recall type
Description
Correct recall
instances where participants recalled a complete idea unit from the
original narratives
Partial recall
instances where participants recalled part of an idea unit from the
original narratives
Distortion/
reinterpretation
instances where participants recalled a distorted version or an
Addition
instances where participants recalled an idea unit that was not part of
alternative interpretation of an idea unit from the original narratives
the original narratives
Omission
instances where participants failed to recall an idea unit from the
original narratives
Table 2: Classification index for recalled idea units
(Developed by Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004)
28
The following list provides an example for each of the above categories.
Recall type
Description
Original sentence
My uncle was chasing a kangaroo.
Correct recall
The uncle was chasing a kangaroo.
Partial recall
The uncle was chasing something.
Distortion/reinterpretation
The dog was chasing a kangaroo.
Addition
The uncle was chasing a kangaroo and he ran over it.
or
There was a cave.
Omission
a case where neither the uncle nor the chasing of the
kangaroo was recalled
Table 3: Examples of recalled idea units
(Source: Sharifian, Rochecouste, & Malcolm, 2004)
The analysis of the links between each idea unit and the schemas instantiated by them was carried
out by way of a series of data analysis meetings with the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members
of the research team.
The significance of idea-unit analysis for the exploration of schemas is multifaceted. The partial
recall of idea units may, for example, be attributed to unfamiliarity with the schemas that inform
the original discourse. Additions or alternative interpretations on the other hand generally
originate from the schemas that participants bring to the task of making sense of a text. Alternative
interpretations in particular may well arise due to a discrepancy between the schemas that are
associated with the original texts and those that are activated as a result of the participants
listening to the texts. “Additional” idea units may be of two types: those that fit with the schemas
associated with the original texts, and those that do not fit with these schemas. The latter may
arise from idiosyncratic or culturally different schemas that the participants employ in trying to
comprehend and recall the content of the original narratives.
29
Ch a p te r II : F in d in g s
Findings
This research, which investigated how linguistic variations from the original text
present in students’ recalls, indicated that the content of that recall was driven by
different interpretive schemas to those which were intended to be evoked by the
author. When a student reinterprets a text by applying different schemas to those
that were intended by the author of the original narrative (or indeed, those which
have been perceived by the teacher to be appropriate), then we can say the text has
been reschematised. This term is used as a more nuanced reflection of the process of
interpretation in cross-dialectal communication as it attempts to identify the origin
or nature of the reinterpretation or perceived misinterpretation. Consequently,
it provides a platform on which more accurate discussion about cross‑cultural
communication can be achieved. Furthermore, it implies a more positive appraisal
of the student’s narrative, valuing it as a narrative in its own right, rather than as a
deficient recall (e.g. as a “distortion” of the original narrative).
Reschematisations were evidenced by the recalls of a number of the Aboriginal
students; and, as we shall see, these reschematisations produced both subtle and
radical alternatives to the original text.
The process of reschematisation
Reschematisation may be identified in several ways. As noted above, the schemas
which inform the recall of the text will have been evoked from a range of sources
in the original narrative. The student’s ability to access the relevant schema
required to make predictions and interpret the text as the writer/speaker intended
depends on having the appropriate and activated prior knowledge. In processing
incoming information, schemas will be evoked in competition with each other
until the most appropriate schema is selected. In the absence of the required
schema, in interpreting and thence reproducing linguistic input, listeners are likely
to resort to their own existing schemas which must differ from those intended by
30
the speaker/author. Where different schemas are employed, the listener conducts a process of
reschematisation (or assigning the nearest possible schema that she or he has available in their
cognitive repertoire) to make sense of the text. This process can be viewed as following two main
steps:
1) Schema activation: Triggers, such as the linguistic elements of a text, will activate
pre‑existing schemas to varying degrees. This personal process of interpretation is where
the listener determines what information “makes sense” and what does not. In other
words, schema activation takes place as the listener tries to discover in what way, if any, the
incoming information fits any existing schemas. Schema activation is followed by two more
stages when the individual is required to reproduce the text: (a) setting up cues for recall,
and (b) providing a framework for retelling.
2) Construction of reschematised text: The triggered schemas are reactivated and combined in
the process of interpreting the text and inform the reconstruction of the original idea units
into the student’s recalled text. Depending on the extent of the congruence of elements of
the original text to the student’s activated schema, the recall will be subject to:
• the addition, omission and perceived partial recalls of idea units
• the foregrounding or backgrounding of elements in the text
• the reordering of specific elements of the text.
The following section will elaborate and exemplify the notion of reschematisation as well as other
aspects of the recalls for each of the five narratives: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat;
The Story about Ping; Bushfire; Puss in Boots; and The Magic Colours.
31
1. Main Findings
Text 1: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat
Summary of the story:
Rose, a widow, and her dog, John Brown, happily live together. They rely on each other for
company, but when a cat appears in the garden, John Brown refuses to acknowledge it. Rose,
however, is quite taken by the cat. Eventually Rose falls ill, and this distresses John Brown.
He reluctantly chooses to welcome the cat into the home to help Rose get better.
Out of all the narratives, this particular text elicited the broadest variety of interpretations among
Aboriginal students compared to non-Aboriginal students. The data for Aboriginal students
revealed a favouring of certain archetypal schemas, namely, a scary things schema (Malcolm &
Rochecouste, 2000) and a warning schema (Sharifian, 2008), both of which may be associated
with a sickness/death schema. These schemas are of high cultural importance to, and are ever
present for, many Aboriginal people. Consequently, for many students, these particular schemas
altered the interaction and the roles of the characters of the original text, ultimately leading to
reschematisations of the recalls.
Consider the possible role of a “dog” in a narrative. Figure 1 gives a possible illustration of how
the cultural conceptualisation of “dog” may differ between groups, remembering, of course, that
schemas are subject to individual interpretation and are dynamic and heterogeneously distributed
across individuals of a cultural group. The Venn diagram contains underlying proposition schemas:
those which may be shared (in the intersection), and those which may not. The diagram shows
that from a cross-cultural perspective, the word “dog” can generate common and competing
proposition schemas.
32
Example cultural conceptualisations of “dog”
Proposition schema for
Aboriginal conceptualisation
Proposition schema for nonAboriginal conceptualisation
The dog can be owned by a family
or individual
The dog can be owned by a family,
individual or community
Doesn’t like cats
The dog eats before we eat
The dog eats when hungry
The dog accompanies us
in our daily activities
The dog is free to go where it pleases
The dog can sense/protect
against spirits
Protects the home
from physical
dangers
The dog is taken for walks
every day
The dog can sense/protect
against burglars
Figure 1: Same word; different schemas
In respect to the text, John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, the fundamental cultural
conceptualisations that feature therein, for example, of “dog”, differed in relevance for both groups
(see Data Analysis: Appendix 2). For some Aboriginal students, the interplay of these conceptual
factors (such as the death, the dog, the fire and/or the cat) has brought about a reschematisation;
and so the fire, the dog and the cat become foregrounded in different ways to the way they were
intended by the original. For example, the Aboriginal reschematisation appears to have relied on
Aboriginal proposition schemas such as the following:
Proposition schemas
Elaboration (may differ for people from different groups)
FIRE PROTECTS YOU
In the Aboriginal worldview, fire provides the light to keep
FROM TORMENTING
particular Beings, or “spirits” away, such as balyits1.
SPIRITS
TORMENTING SPIRITS
Balyits can bring sickness to someone if, for example, they go into
CAUSE ILLNESS
culturally restricted areas.
Figure 2: Two Aboriginal proposition schemas
1 “Balyits” are spirits that are sometimes also referred to as “little people”. They can do “bad” things such
as torment people in their sleep, steal children or bring sickness like “glue ear” (Bennell, 1993).
33
The reschematisation that attributes these roles to the fire, cat and dog may be elaborated as
follows:
• Role of “fire”: The fire has a range of strong, connotative spiritual meanings: it encourages
healing through its warmth [Fire as medicine] and it has a central place in yarning circles;
it wards off evil spirits; and protects children at night from being taken by evil sprits or
balyits [Fire as protector]. These aspects of alternative conceptualisations of fire can be
seen in the following examples: Extract 1:
Extract 1:
Dialogue
T
OK Shanice, can you tell me the story of John Brown?
S
He sat around the fire an … an at the end when he purred an stuff.
Extract 2:
Dialogue
S
Then Rosie, Rose got sick … den she sat near the fire.
Being sick and sitting near the fire may have a logical relationship for Shanice. Recalls from
Aboriginal students were reschematised in such a way that Rose’s health (or sickness) is
foregrounded over the first complication in the original narrative – John Brown and Rose’s
opposing attitudes towards the cat.
These results of the relevance of roles were reinforced when the correct idea units
recalled were compared for each group. Generally, analysis showed Aboriginal students’
preponderance for recalling the death (at the beginning) and the fire (at the end).
Non‑Aboriginal students showed a higher preponderance for recalling the section
where Rose falls ill, but also when John Brown asks if the cat will make her feel better
(see Figure 5).
• Role of “cat”: Cats are not as common as dogs in Aboriginal communities. They may not
be seen to be as useful as dogs and may represent the unknown. This cat comes at night,
34
when “scary things” happen. The eyes of the cat shining at night can be compared to the
eyes of evil spirits. It is possible that the cat is a spirit or is the bringer of bad news. These
attributes trigger a scary things schema.
The nature of John Brown’s character in this story is already (and perhaps intentionally) vague
as he shows both canine and human qualities – while he has a companion/caregiver role similar
to that of a western conceptualised dog, he is nevertheless humanised by a range of human-like
emotions: his reluctance to acknowledge the cat (denial), to accept the cat (fear) and to share
Rose’s affection with anyone/anything else (jealousy). These competing schemas (animal displaying
human behaviour vs. animal displaying animal behaviour) provide a tension that is a major theme
in the story from a possible western conceptualisation:
“We don’t need you, cat,” [John Brown] said. “We are all right, Rose and I.”
The personification of animals (anthropomorphism) is common in both Aboriginal and
non‑Aboriginal stories, but they are personified in different ways. The intent in the non-Aboriginal
worldview is to give the character more depth by using a metaphor with which most readers
will closely identify – human nature. However, there is an important variation in the Aboriginal
conceptualisation in that there is a (possibly unnamed) spiritual element that is present in the
environment, and this is consistent with common Aboriginal (Dreaming) “stories” where animals
play central roles. This variation may influence, albeit subtly, the conceptualisation of the animals
and therefore the understanding of the narrative, contributing to the reschematisation: John Brown
is a spiritual caregiver who has specific abilities (which are part of an Aboriginal “dog” schema),
possibly including being able to sense spirits and hunt kangaroos.
35
Major schemas in reschematisations
Reschematisations occurred in the recalls of several Aboriginal students, and all were based
around similar schemas. Figure 3 summarises aspects of the original narrative and shows the
reschematised interpretations that these points may have inspired in these recalls. This comparison
indicates the overall difference in interpretations and reflects a general reschematisation of the
text.
Original narrative progression
• Rose lives with John Brown
• The death is an unmarked event
• John Brown doesn’t want anyone to
come between him and Rose
General reschematisation
• There are 2, possibly more characters
(character descriptions such as the dog,
the ghost, someone else, use of other
names)
• The death is a marked event
• The dog protects Rose
• Cat wants milk
• Cat annoys Rose
• Rose has a positive interest in the cat
• Cat signifies a negative event
• Cat takes from Rose, without giving
anything back
• Rose falls ill
• Cat makes Rose ill
• Cat makes Rose better
• The fire makes Rose better
Resolution: unproblematic: positive
Resolution: problematic: this is a scary story
resolution and Rose, John Brown and the
and Rose may still be ill
cat are all together
Figure 3: General comparison of original and Aboriginal recall progressions of Text 1
The development of this reschematisation (right column, Figure 3) may stem from several verbal
elements that act as conceptual triggers such as died, he looked after her, he watched, fire, night,
cat (see Data Analysis: Appendix 2) that instantiate particular Aboriginal schemas.
36
These verbal elements are often present in the recalls and are foregrounded in some manner
(by repetition, for example). To examine the major schemas involved in the reschematisations, it is
necessary to consider what verbal elements have been added, omitted, distorted, foregrounded
and backgrounded. The following excerpt from Bobby (Year 4) highlights these verbal elements
and exemplifies the impact of different cultural conceptualisations, evident in the high degree of
“distortion” in respect to the original narrative:
Extract 3:
Dialogue
T
Right, Bobby can you tell me the story please?
B
Um, there’s man and a cat and uh other person [addition] … the people [distortion]
keep feeding the cat [distortion] an de cat was warning them [addition] … something
I think then um the man [distortion] … think there was a ghost [addition] an they’re
saying that they don’t need the cat [distortion] an then the person said … they, they
give im milk an then the ghost [addition] … I think he was tipped the bowl out, an
then keeps givin milk … an tips the bowl out again … an then um he wasted the milk
[addition] … I think the cat died [distortion].
Arguably the presence of the main character of the original text, Rose, has now been
backgrounded in Extract 3. The cat is now the main actor who interacts with “people”, the man and
then the ghost. Bobby’s foregrounding of the role of the cat represents just one element of the
reschematisation of the text.
Warning schema
The role of the cat is strengthened by the cat’s association with another evoked schema. Its
presence and behaviour (namely its insistence on engaging with the characters or “humbuggin”
them) as well as other elements such as “midnight”, have appeared to trigger a warning schema
(Sharifian, 2008). Here, Bobby has associated the cat with a warning sign; and there is a causal
relationship between the appearance of the cat and a negative event (being shot or arrested, and
death). Consider another extract from Bobby’s recall:
37
Extract 4:
Line
33
Dialogue
T
OK, when you in the beginning, you said that you thought the cat was
warning them, what do you think the cat was warning them about?
34
B
Um, that they're gonna … die (whispers)
35
T
Oh really? Because of something, or? What do you mean, “the cat was
warning them they were going to die”?
36
B
They might get shot, or get arrested.
37
T
Oh, why do you think that might happen in that story?
38
B
Coz the cat came to them.
The teacher presses for a satisfactory response. First, Bobby reacts to the question in line 34 by
whispering his response. This could indicate a reluctance to speak due to the prevalent cultural
schema associated with death. Bobby may not want to share what may be culturally restricted
knowledge, and so does not want to say too much. He continues by relating the warning to a
possible traumatic event (not present in the original narrative) (line 36). He then reverts to his
literal interpretation of the cat’s presence (line 38). Finally, he remains silent (line 40, Extract 5).
He is unable to discern exactly why the cat intends to warn the other characters in the story.
“Unclarity” in communication
“Unclarity” is used to reflect the non-sharing of schemas which lead to a degree of communication
breakdown that may not be apparent to either the teacher or student.
When a misunderstanding is made apparent in some way, either explicitly or implicitly (such
as through extended questioning for clarification), then there is a risk that the student will see
themselves at fault for not understanding, and indeed the teacher may hold the same opinion.
In Extract 4 the teacher tries to understand an element of the recall and the student tries to
respond. Bobby may not only be unable to justify his answer (in other words, he is unable to
38
explicitly identify the schema), but he may also in fact be uncomfortable with responding as it may
be culturally inappropriate to talk about the death event.
For the student this text clearly makes sense. From a non-Aboriginal perspective, however, the
teacher’s confusion may seem justified: no such relationship appears to be implied (either lexically
or conceptually), nor is there a mention of any such negative events. Unsatisfied with the answer,
the teacher presses Bobby for a more satisfying explanation:
Extract 5:
Line
39
Dialogue
T
Right, but why? Why was the cat warning them that that might happen?
Why do you think that was going to happen, might happen, in the story?
Was there something in the story that made you think that was going to
happen?
40
B
Em … [silence]
41
T
No? It’s just what you thought? OK, anything else you wanna say about the
story?
42
B
No.
The teacher is struggling to understand how Bobby could have associated death and ghosts with
the story: the lack of explicit associations (at the lexico-syntactic level: for example, additions, such
as being shot) or implicit associations (at the conceptual level, since the teacher does not share
this warning schema with the student) cause a considerable degree of confusion in the teacher’s
understanding of the student’s interpretation. In addition, in extracts two and three, a certain
unclarity in communication is evidenced by a condensed period of questioning: seven questions
out of seven utterances over just four turns. This high rate of unidirectional questioning inhibits the
discursive power of the student and limits the student’s response time. Consequently, the student,
albeit unintentionally, is silenced.
39
After insistent questioning by the teacher, Bobby chooses not to continue the discussion.
The schema(s) evoked up to this point have caused Bobby some discomfort – his shorter responses
and increasing silence show that he is clearly reluctant to continue to engage with either the
schema or the teacher. Initially he is satisfied with his interpretation, which he delivers fluidly and
with few pauses since, to him, it makes sense. He only falters when he is asked to justify specific
elements of his recall. For him, the associations between the evoked schemas do not have to be
made explicit in the recall as he may assume that the teacher shares these conceptualisations with
him. In Extract 4, for example, Bobby does not feel the need to explain the association between the
signal (the cat) and the outcome (getting shot) (lines 36–38).
Being pressed to give a justification may also make Bobby question how his answer is being
interpreted. The reschematisation may have led to the apparent omission in Bobby’s recall of one
of the main complications in the original story – Rose’s sickness. However, the sickness would be
implicitly present within the evoked schema and therefore would not need to be made explicit in
the recall (given the hearer is believed, at least initially, to share the same schema).
In terms of idea units, Bobby produces a long recall relative to other students. However, there is
a high degree of omission in Bobby’s recall in respect to the original narrative. Most of Bobby’s
main recall (10 out of 14 idea units) can be classed as additions, and only 4%1 of the original idea
units are recalled. These additions are by-products of the reschematisation of the narrative. The
remaining four idea units, however, could be classed as partial recalls.
Scary things and fire schemas
Rose’s sickness was the most salient feature (the most recalled idea unit) in the recalls of both
groups. For non-Aboriginal students, the sickness tended to be mentioned towards the end of the
recall as a prelude to the dog accepting the cat in order to make Rose feel better (as is consistent
with the original narrative). In many of the Aboriginal students’ recalls, however, the sickness was
positioned at the beginning of the recall. For example, Tisha goes straight to Rose’s sickness:
40
1 The percentage of idea unit recall is calculated by comparing the correct and partial recalls with the
total number of idea units in the original. The figure is only a rough indication of a successful recall as
post-interview discussion about the recall, which could generate more recall, is not included in this figure.
Extract 6:
Dialogue
T
OK Tisha, can you tell me the story please?
S
Um, the woman got sick … an the dog think … all afternoon … after dinner she grabbed
a feed … told the dog … to ope’ the door for the cat … an she went near the fire … an
the cat sat beside er an (long pause) … the en’.
Tisha produces a minimal recall leaving little surface evidence of a deep interpretation. The
extent of her understanding and how much Tisha omits from her recall is only revealed during the
questioning session (Extract 7).
Extract 7:
Line
Dialogue
17
T
You did like it? What did you like about it?
18
S
The … where she sits by the fire.
19
T
Where she … ?
20
S
… sits by the fire.
21
T
Oh OK, why did you like that bit? You like sitting by a fire? Maybe that's why.
Was there anything you didn't like in the story?
22
S
Where the cat sat on that um window.
23
T
Why didn't you like that bit?
24
S
Scared.
25
T
You were scared? Does that make you scared?
26
S
Little.
27
T
Why's that? You don't know? OK.
28
T
When you think back on the whole story, what was the most important part
of the story for you?
29
S
Um, her husband died.
30
S
An’ when her … and the dog was living.
41
The further questioning reveals that the recall may be relying on multiple and inter-related cultural
conceptualisations.
• Evidence of the fire schema [Fire as protector] is shown in Tisha being comforted by the fire
(line 18).
• The cat evokes the scary schema (lines 22–26) because of the reference, in the original text,
to its eyes “were like lamps”. This may have impacted on her lack of engagement with the
teacher’s question asking for clarification (line 27) where she is either unable (due to lack of
desire), and/or possibly not given due opportunity (lack of time), to elaborate on her fear
(line 27).
• Lines 28–30 can be interpreted as the dog is living and looks after Rose, replacing the
husband. As mentioned before, the dog has adopted the role of protector, consistent with
the Aboriginal conceptualisation of dog. She has omitted these two most important factors
from her main recall, potentially suggesting that their presence had always been implicit in
the activated schemas.
• Tisha could see the final scene where all are united around the fire as related to an
Aboriginal family/community schema.
As with all recalls, further (possibly open) questions could have been asked to clarify the
interpretation, such as: What’s going to happen to the lady? Can the cat make her sick? Why
don’t you like the cat? However, there is nevertheless evidence to show that Tisha is relying on
alternative schemas to those possibly intended by the author to interpret the text. This text is
therefore an example of reschematisation.
The salient features here are the sickness, the fire and the cat – all elements of scary things and
fire schemas. These conceptual actors are also present in Bobby’s recall; however, they interact
differently.
The fire schema
The fire represents a positive image for many of the Aboriginal students (see Bushfire text analysis
below): it protects as it keeps people warm, wards off evil spirits and can heal people. In the
42
following example, Eddie, another Aboriginal student (Year 4), makes an association between
Rose’s sickness and the healing powers of the fire. Rose and the midnight cat are both mentioned
five times, but John Brown only twice. According to Eddie, John Brown has died, but still manages
to tip the milk out possibly implying he is there as a spirit presence.
Extract 8:
Dialogue
T
OK Eddie, can you tell me the story of John Brown?
E
John Brown died … An there was a midnight cat … An (pause) Rose went … en put
milk outside for the midnight cat … An John Brown tipped it out … An that she (?) den
midnight cat jumped up onto her window an … An then jumped onto the couches (pause)
… then Rosie, Rose got sick … Den she sat near the fire … an the midnight cat sat on that
chair (pause).
This extract is now contrasted below with the original. Though both texts are clearly lexically
similar, it would seem that Eddie’s interpretation has been reschematised to some extent. Rose’s
sitting by the fire is in line with the activated schemas (sickness/death), because she needs to get
better. She can see the cat and can keep a safe distance from it.
Original
Recall
Then Rose got up
Then Rosie, Rose got sick …
(Rose has recovered)
(Rose needs to get better)
and sat by the fire for a while.
den she sat near the fire …
(Habitual act: Rose usually sits by the fire in
(Intentional act: Rose is by the fire to get
the evening.)
better. Time is not marked.)
And the midnight cat sat
An the midnight cat sat
on the arm of the chair …
on that chair … [End of recall]
(Everyone lives happily together. Story
(Rose is still sick. The cat is on a particular
concluded.)
chair, possibly distanced from Rose, who
is with John Brown and the fire, and is
therefore safe. Story continues.)
Figure 4
43
Comparison of correctly and partially recalled idea units
The correctly or partially recalled idea units for the two groups (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
students) were mapped against the original idea units (see Figure 5). This measure shows what
was or was not recalled. An average percentage of correctly and partially recalled idea units was
calculated and compared across the groups as the number of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
students was different. While the sample size is small, clear patterns have emerged that confirm
the conceptual findings above and show a different perspective on the differences in recalls.
Consider the first idea unit (out of 108) of the original text:
Rose’s husband died a long time ago.
This idea unit was recalled by 68% of Aboriginal students and 50% of non-Aboriginal students.
The 18% difference indicates that this particular idea unit was recalled by relatively more Aboriginal
students than non-Aboriginal students. From this it may be deduced that this idea unit was more
relevant to the Aboriginal group in general.
Non-Aboriginal
Aboriginal
1: mentioning of death
2: she lived with her dog
17:
more Ab’l students
1: mentioning
of deathrecall
dialogue b/t Rose and JB
2: we don’t need you cat
2: when JB wasn’t looking
60: “we don’t need you cat”
103: the cat came in (many
Aboriginal students recall “cat sat
on chair” but not “cat came in”
105: sat by
the fire
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
Figure 5: Graph showing the difference of recall for each idea unit for each group
Figure 5 shows the differences for the entire narrative. The vertical axis (y) represents the idea
units from 1 (first) to 108 (last). This comparison indicates that certain idea units and groups of
44
idea units are more salient than others for each group. Figure 6 summarises the groups of idea
units that were most salient for each group. Overall, the differences in percentages that were
greater than or equal to 15% between the groups were:
Aboriginal group
Non-Aboriginal group
The death of the husband
Rose lived with a dog
Something in the bushes/garden
Filling the milk bowl/tipping it out exchange
between John Brown and Rose
Rose becoming sick
Rose becoming sick
John Brown’s confrontation with the cat
John Brown not getting his breakfast
“we don’t need you, cat”
Sitting by the fire
John Brown letting the cat in
Figure 6: Summary of most salient areas of text for each group
While this particular method of comparative analysis can give a broad indication of what students
in both groups tended to correctly/partially recall and omit, comparison of the groups can also
mask certain findings and a more nuanced understanding. Since it only looks at differences and
present or absent idea units, the comparison will not reveal, for example:
1. If both groups omitted an idea unit. For example, neither group mentioned: “Then she
wound up the clock and took the milk bottles out.” (idea units 49 and 50).
2. If both groups correctly recalled an idea unit. For example, 75% of Aboriginal students
recalled the sickness versus 90% of non-Aboriginal students. The 15% difference does not
show that this idea unit was the most recalled of all the recalls for both groups.
3. The order in which the idea units were recalled.
45
4. Any syntactic or conceptual foregrounding/backgrounding.
5. Any additions and distortions, which tend to make the different conceptualisations more
noticeable.
Text 2: The Story about Ping
Ping is a duck who lives on a boat with his very large family and their master. Every day, Ping
and his relatives would be marched off the boat to look for food. The last duck to get back on
the boat at the end of the day would get a spank from the Master. One day, knowing he was
late and for fear of getting spanked, Ping hid from the Master. Ping ends up losing his boat
and goes to look for it. He comes across other boats and at one point is caught by a young
boy. The boy’s family want to eat Ping for dinner, so he lets Ping free. Ping eventually finds his
family and Master. He gets a spank for being the last one to board the boat, but is happy to
be reunited with his family.
This text provided important instantiations of family schema, evident in the way Aboriginal
students and non-Aboriginal students recalled the family members.
A comparison of the responses (see Appendix 3) from students when recalling the family element
of this particular narrative revealed two distinct patterns (see Figure 7).
46
Family schema
The original order of family members (i.e. mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles,
cousins) was generally reflected in all of the non-Aboriginal students’ recalls. Aboriginal students,
on the other hand, mostly recalled the family in a different order: aunts (aunies) or cousins, then
uncles. Sisters, brothers and sometimes mother and father were mentioned less often.
The Aboriginal cultural category of the primary family unit spreads beyond that of a nuclear
unit to include the so-called “extended family” (Sharifian, 2011, p. 16). Two different cultural
conceptualisations emerge from the data: one where the mother, father and siblings form part of a
core group, conceptually distanced from the cousins, aunts and uncles; the other more of a holistic
conceptualisation focused around cousins and aunties (Appendix 3).
Non-Aboriginal students
Aboriginal students
uncles
sisters
dad
cousins
cousins
mum/dad
brothers
mum
brother/sister
aunts
Figure 7: Comparison of conceptualisations of family
As noted in by Collard (2011, personal communication), “family is crucial. It’s central to our lives”.
The extent of the importance of family was explicitly mentioned by some Aboriginal students as
being the reason why they liked the story:
47
Extract 9:
Dialogue
Teacher:
Did you like it, the story? What did you like, which was your best bit?
Maliesha:
Um, when Ping found is family.
Extract 10:
Dialogue
Teacher:
What was nice about it?
Mitch:
Well, I didn’t like the bit about where he had to get smacked when you go
across the bridge, but he had lotsa cousins and I liked the bit where all the
cousins are at the beach [addition] tryin’ ta find food [distortion].
Teacher:
What did you think of the story? Did you like it? [Freddy nods] What did you
like about it?
Freddy:
… the boat …
Teacher:
What did you like about the boat?
Freddy:
… and the cousins.
While the foregrounding of the family element may be expected, it is nevertheless an example of
the impact of cultural conceptualisations on language use.
48
Text 3: Bushfire
Two children reluctantly go to school as a storm is picking up. The wind is getting stronger,
dogs are barking and the birds seem to have disappeared. The mother of the children hears
sirens and realises that a bushfire has started. People are asked to evacuate and the mother
goes to the school to pick up her children. They take some belongings and the cat, and escape
the encroaching fire which is engulfing houses and causing animals to flee. After a few days,
the whole family return to what was once their cabin. They sift through charred remains.
The mother (who is pregnant) at one point releases an emotional cry, scaring the children.
The family start to retrieve certain objects, including a toy fire truck that has been untouched
by the fire, and a camera. Upon finding these items, the father happily takes photos of the
mother and their children holding the truck.
This particular text relied heavily on poetic devices such as alliteration, metaphor, metre and
rhyme; and so there was relatively little literal information in the text. In terms of omissions of
idea units, the figurative language was shown to be largely not recalled. Instead, students tended
to recall the literal sections of the text – mainly direct speech and utterances regarding physical
objects (motorbike, fire engine, car and classroom).
Some differences in the recall of these objects were noted. For example, non-Aboriginal students
recalled “Christmas present” and Aboriginal students just recalled a “present”. This non-distinction
may reflect different perceptions of the concept of a present, such as the act of giving or receiving
something being more culturally relevant than the occasion, such as Christmas in this case.
Key observations made from the recalls of this text were the instantiation of spirit and fire
schemas.
49
Spirit schema
One Aboriginal student made the following recall.
“An’ the dad was on the other side. An’ the two kids was on the other side. An’ the mum, in her
dress, there was a baby … And … an’ then the spirit went up in the air …”
One marked element in this extract, from a non-Aboriginal perspective, is the addition of spirit. It is
possible that various elements of the story have combined to trigger a range of schemas. Figure 8
shows how different elements of the text have combined to generate a spirit schema.
In Figure 8, extracts one to four evoke the image of a dust storm, or a “wirli-wirli” as known to
Nyungar people (and others), and this has spiritual implications. This, along with text extract 5 in
Figure 8, could explain the addition of “spirit” to the recall.
Spirit schema
2. Nowhere on earth
or up in the sky was
the call of a single bird
3. “The wind’s making
me cough.” Wind had
thrown her voice away
wirli-wirli
1. Trees bent boughs,
tossed leaves. Dogs
yowled hard
4. Sheets of iron bent,
buckled around stumps
Spirit
5. Creature in pain, circled the air, unhappy song flew up
high, echoes, carrying message to world of beyond, baby
Figure 8: Possible development of the spirit schema
50
In Figure 8, extracts one to four evoke the image of a dust storm, or a “wirli-wirli” as known to
Nyungar people (and others), and this has spiritual implications. This, along with the text extract 5
in Figure 8, could explain the addition of “spirit” to the recall.
The wirli-wirli is associated with spirits. “Sometimes they are angry. If the wirli-wirli goes one
way, it’s OK. If it goes the other way, it can take people or children away. This is a common
story for children.” (Glenys Collard)
Fire schema
Competing conceptualisations of fire (see John Brown analysis) are evidenced later in the recall
when the student (G) is being asked some post-recall questions by the teacher.
Extract 11:
Line
Dialogue
31
T
… what sort of a fire was it then?
32
G
A bushfire … An' the fire missed one thing was the truck … big fire truck An'
yeah. That's all.
33
T
OK. And did you like the story? Or did you not like the story?
34
G
Sord'of.
35
T
What did you like about the story?
36
G
There was fire.
37
T
You like fires, do you? Bushfires?
38
G
No.
Here the teacher associates G’s response (“fire”) as meaning “bushfire”. This could be perceived
as a logical conclusion on the part of the teacher, as G, in line 32, recognises the nature of the fire
being a “bushfire”, that living things need to flee “so they don’t die”. However, regardless of the
51
narrative he has just recalled and the intended line of questioning of the teacher (about Bushfire),
he responds with his base conceptualisation of fire (line 36) that seems to override the context.
“There was fire” signifies something that is not harmful or destructive; rather, it is a source of
warmth and safety. He clarifies:
34.
Teacher: What sort of fire do you like?
35.
G: Fire what keep me warm.
Text 4: Puss in Boots
A poor miller dies leaving his youngest son a cat. The son likes the cat, but is not sure how
he can make his fortune from it. This special cat comforts his master and asks that he simply
get him a large bag and a pair of boots. The cat then proceeds to make his master a fortune
by making the king believe the master is a land and castle owner – the Marquis of Carabas.
Thanks to Puss in Boots’ ingenuity, the king becomes impressed with the master. As a result,
he makes him a prince and allows him to marry the princess. The prince and princess live
happily ever after and the cat lives in material comfort for the rest of his days, not having to
ever hunt for mice again.
The character Puss in Boots was familiar to many students because of the popular animated movie
Shrek2. Students from both groups often commented on the story being “a little bit like Shrek”, or
words to that effect. Here, the students are explicitly mentioning a schema they have accessed to
make sense of the story and this will have partially reschematised the story for those students.
Signs of other factors, including schemas, influencing the recalls were evident.
52
2 Shrek is a film series based on the picture book by William Steig and produced by DreamWorks
Animation.
Bereavement schema
“[Death] in our world – it is normal. Every day you would hear of someone pass away.”
(Glenys Collard)
An Aboriginal bereavement schema may have a strong influence on cultural conceptualisations as
death is ever-present in the lives of many Aboriginal people and is a major cultural event. It entails
a set of experiences, and therefore schemas, which may involve the enactment of particular roles
within the family and cultural “obligations”3; travelling large distances; time away from school
and/or country; seeing family; and bereavement. The death itself, of course, is a sad event.
In Puss in Boots, the two deaths that take place result in positive consequences: the death of the
father leads to an inheritance for the three sons; and the death of the ogre leads to a castle and
land for the prince and princess (and Puss in Boots) to live in.
Earnie, like many other Aboriginal people, has experienced the passing of many family members
through his life. Just before the research project, a member of Earnie’s family had indeed passed
away. In his recall of this text, the deaths seem to have instantiated a death or bereavement
schema which may have impacted on his recall in the following ways:
• [Death] is mentioned five times in 10 turns.
• Earnie has reinterpreted the story by saying that the master had drowned when in the
original, the text says:
Original text: Puss ran out, shouting, “Help! Help! The Marquis of Carabas is drowning!”
The King ordered the coach to stop and sent his servants to rescue Marquis.
3 “Obligations” is used here within the context of a role. It is not meant to imply any emotions that may
be associated with the notion of “obligation” such as apathy, reluctance or compulsion to do something.
53
• The overall impression of the story was mainly sad:
Extract 12:
Dialogue
Teacher:
What did you think of the story?
Earnie:
It was sad.
Teacher:
Why was it sad?
Earnie:
Because Puss in Boots’ master died [Distortion]. He drowned [Distortion].
This is another example of reschematisation as depicted in Figure 9.
Bereavement schema
Father’s death
Inheritance
Death is a
happy event
Ogre’s death
Castle and land
Original story
Reschematisation
Earnie’s recall
Death is a
sad event
‘death’ referred to 5 times in 9 speech
acts/turns of conversation
Figure 9: Reschematisation in Earnie’s recall
The importance of this schema may have led to the foregrounding of death and the backgrounding
of other elements in the story, such as the hunting section. However, it must be noted that evoking
54
a bereavement schema will clearly impact upon any student. Based on this limited evidence, the
aim here is to merely show how that impact could happen, rather than this being a particular
cultural conceptualisation.
Cultural focus of the text or a hunting schema?
Not everything in the students’ recalls will be evidence of the influence of schemas or an Aboriginal
English discourse pattern. The cultural focus of a text may also resonate with the student, bearing
on what she or he recalls. In other words, a recall might be structured by a cultural connection
made between the narrative, or a section of it, and a particular cultural act or event that is familiar
to the student.
In Puss in Boots, there was a preponderance of Aboriginal over non-Aboriginal students to
include the hunting section in their recall. This possibly reflects the fact that the capture of prey
is for Aboriginal students an area of cultural focus, rather than representing the influence of an
Aboriginal hunting schema.
Rochecouste and Malcolm (2000, p. 17) note that the key features of the hunting schema are that
it:
… relates experience with respect to the observation, pursuit and capture of prey. There is
usually initial orientation of the time and/or place of the hunting event and observation. The
discourse then contains elements of pursuit and capture. Pursuit often reflects persistence with
repeated and/or unsuccessful actions (e.g. shoot and miss, look for and never find). Success of
the hunt is reflected in killing and bringing the kill home, and sometimes cooking and eating it.
The original story in Puss in Boots entails observation (finding the rabbit hole), setting a trap
(“She put the bag down with its mouth wide open”), capture (“and swiftly drew the strings of the
bag together and the fat rabbit was caught”) and resumption of travel (“Then Puss slung the bag
over her shoulder and set off in her yellow boots”). While there are some elements here that are
common to the hunting schema, important elements are missing (pursuit, persistence, cooking and
eating the prey).
Derek – an Aboriginal student – produced a reduced recall that mainly featured this particular
section of the text.
55
Extract 13:
Line
1
Dialogue
D
Um, once there was Puss in Boots (orientation)
2
and the there was a girl (orientation)
3
and she wanted yellow boots (orientation)
4
an’ she got it (capture)
5
an’ then she said to someone (orientation)
6
she wanted a bag of lettuce (orientation)
7
an’ then she got it (capture)
8
an’ then she went to a rabbit hole (moving on)
9
an’ then she put it in its hole (setting a trap)
10
an’ she went behind a tree (moving on)
11
an’ then a rabbit popped its head out (setting a trap)
12
an’ then it went in the bag
13
an’ then the string
14
an’ then he tied it up (capture)
15
an’ he caught it (capture)
16
an’ then he took it … she took it to the king (moving on)
There is little evidence of Derek drawing on a hunting schema to modify the original. He has
faithfully reproduced the elements of setting the trap and capture, which were in the original.
However, he has reduced the elements of observation and resumption of travel, and has not
introduced any of the elements of pursuit, persistence, cooking or eating which might have been
further evidence of the influence of the hunting schema. There is, however, some evidence of a
tendency to alternate moving and stopping elements, as is typical of the travel schema.
56
It would appear that the common interest in capture has helped the Aboriginal child to focus on
that element in the story and to recall it well. This is reinforced by the child’s response when asked
what he liked about the story:
Teacher: What was good about it?
Derek: I liked um when the when the Puss um caught the rabbit (i.e. capture).
Text 5: Magic Colours
Long ago, all the birds were black. One evening, the black dove gets a splinter in his foot.
He calls for help and all the other birds come to help, all except for the crow who was upset
for being disturbed by the birds. Crow tried to scare them off, but the birds remained with
their friend, the black dove, whose foot is now quite swollen because of the splinter. The
galah thinks to burst the wound to help the dove, and a fountain of colours comes out,
splashing all the birds giving them their colours. The dove turned white, but the crow did not
get splashed by the colours because he had not stayed near the dove to help him.
Many students had already encountered this text. “Correct recalls” – recalled idea units that
matched those of the original narrative – were mainly recorded with little in the way of additions,
distortions and omission.
57
2. Other findings:
2.1 Length of recalls
The findings reveal a great deal of conceptual diversity and cultural depth in the recalls of the
Aboriginal students. However, it was found that Aboriginal students tended to give shorter
recalls than the non-Aboriginal students. This was evident in the number of idea units that were
omitted from recalls, and was particularly noticeable in sections of Puss in Boots and The Story
about Ping. This finding raises questions, particularly if descriptive language in story telling
(such as in News Telling sessions, production of and responding to narratives) is highly valued
in the classroom. It was clear from several recalls that Aboriginal students reserved information
that was only revealed during the post-recall questioning. In other words, they were selective
in their recalls. Alternatively, as seen in the case with Bobby, “unclarity” in triggered schemas
between an Aboriginal student and the non‑Aboriginal teacher can lead to a mild breakdown in
communication, thereby limiting an oral recall.
Whatever the reasons, it is clear that there is a range of factors that would need to be considered
before drawing conclusions from the shorter recalls that the students suffered from some kind of
deficit.
58
Chapter III: Educational Applications
and Implications of this Research
“Our kids get their understanding from the whole text, not just
individual words. They have this worldview and knowledge that they
can’t help but use in their understanding and interpreting of stories
and texts. So their understanding of texts means different things as
they bring to it their worldview. Our kids are often labelled as shy
or that they won’t take a risk, but in fact they are trying to interpret
or formulate the most acceptable response which in a classroom
situation is a western perspective. As they formulate their response,
they endeavour to take out of it the innate cultural interpretation
so that ultimately they won’t be shamed or embarrassed by teachers
who are ignorant to our (cultural) worldview.
Our kids know a lot, but over time they learn to filter out what
knowledge they can share and what knowledge to keep to themselves
because they know that some knowledge is not acceptable or
can be misunderstood by some non-Aboriginal people. For many,
success in the classroom requires that an enormous amount of this
worldview is not brought out, because only the western worldview
is acknowledged. We need to foster that Aboriginal knowledge or
worldview of the children by making sure our teachers have the
cultural competencies for teaching children across a diversity of
cultural backgrounds. This will benefit all children in the classroom
and assist in bridging the gap in Aboriginal education.”
Carol Garlett
Chairperson WAAETC
Western Australian Aboriginal Education & Training Council
59
I. The findings of the research and suggested applications
• Reschematisation
• Applications of reschematisation
II. Wider implications of this study
a. Implications of this study for the linguistic understanding of Aboriginal English and
bidialectalism
b. Implications of Aboriginal English Research for education of Aboriginal-English speaking
students in Standard Australian English literacy
1. Public policy
2. Cross-cultural communication: dialect difference and its significance
3. Valuing the dialect of the student: the foundation of two-way bidialectal education
c. Two-way bidialectal education: how to do it
1) Planning and curriculum development
1.1. Identifying Aboriginal English speakers
1.2. Developing a bidialectal curriculum
• Priming the activity
• Explicit teaching
• Providing opportunities to practise code switching
• Developing materials
• Clear purpose for learning activities
• Evaluating, selecting and interpreting texts
2) Implementing the teaching and language program
2.1. Setting up bidialectal communication activities
60
2.2. How to promote SAE competence through scaffolding
2.3. How to exploit culturally inclusive and exclusive texts
2.4. How to give appropriate feedback
2.5. Assessment
III. Summary and conclusion
I. THE FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH AND SUGGESTED APPLICATIONS
This research was undertaken to investigate the degree to which students who are speakers of
Aboriginal English (mis)understand literacy materials (p. 3) and to further explore the already
known impact of the use of the students’ dialect on their educational outcomes (p. 5). The research
employed for the first time a methodology that systematically analysed the way in which Aboriginal
students interpreted the kinds of materials which are used in schools to promote literacy, and it
showed how the concept of the schema could be employed as an analytical tool to this end (pp. 12,
16).
While it cannot be claimed on the basis of the sampling of the student population and of the
literacy texts included that the findings of the study are generalisable to all contexts where
Aboriginal students are being instructed in literacy, the study does throw new light on Aboriginal
students’ classroom performance and educational outcomes. In particular, the study provides
evidence of the process of reschematisation underlying students’ responses to texts in Standard
Australian English (SAE), and it traces the effects of reschematisation on learner behaviour and,
consequently, on teacher response.
This section of the report will expand on what the study shows us about reschematisation and on
how this may be immediately applied in educational practice. It will be followed by a section that
considers the way in which the research complements existing findings on Aboriginal English and
its educational implications.
61
Reschematisation
The study has enabled reschematisation to be viewed both as a process by which
Aboriginal‑English speaking students deal with the educational materials they are confronted with,
and as a product whereby the students produce an alternative reading of what has been presented
to them. The research has documented, across a number of students, the way in which schemas
are activated on the basis of the verbal elements which trigger them (p. 36), and it has shown the
way in which students may draw on the schemas to which they have access in order to construct
a reschematised text (p. 37). The findings support the view that schemas are not so much “ready
made” as negotiated by each person who uses them (pp. 12, 16), and, indeed, often overlapping,
and that it is therefore not possible to generalise too broadly the ways in which reschematisation
will occur. It also supports the view that cultural schemas are not uniformly represented in a
cultural group, but have heterogeneously distributed representation (p. 14) meaning different
Aboriginal students may be influenced by different schemas and in different ways.
Applications of reschematisation
What this study reveals about reschematisation may be applied in at least the following ways:
1. The fact of reschematisation reinforces the view that education, where it involves
Aboriginal students, is inevitably a cross-cultural process. Whether or not the teacher
recognises it, cultural knowledge not shared with the teacher is being drawn on by students
to interpret the learning experiences to which they are being exposed. Unless teachers take
account of this, they will have a limited understanding of the students and their potential.
This will affect the teacher’s capacity to promote learning.
2. The process of reschematisation that this research has enabled us to trace provides
educators with new insight into the role of the learner. The learner is an active participant
in the learning process, working from an existing conceptual base to gain an understanding
of the new material to which he/she is exposed. Teachers need to be aware of the
interpretive process underlying students’ responses and avoid judging bidialectal students’
interpretations on the basis of SAE schemas.
62
3. The interface between two dialects, each of which triggers different schemas in response
to the same linguistic forms, leads to communicative unclarity (p. 38), which affects both
student and teacher behaviour. Students may experience discomfort where cultural
inhibitions are evoked by terms which, on the basis of SAE interpretation, have no particular
loading. Teachers, on the other hand, may be confused when students seem to miss the
point of what they are saying.
4. It follows from this that student reluctance to respond (which is frequently frustrating for
teachers when managing classroom discourse) may be related to the fact that the student
is responding to cultural schemas evoked by the material being discussed (p. 39). Where
teachers are in doubt as to whether or not this is the case, it is best not to press the student
to respond.
5. This research, and the project which preceded it, enables us to see the reciprocal nature of
reschematisation. This project has shown the way in which texts introduced by the teacher
may be reschematised by Aboriginal students, while the previous project showed how
Aboriginal English discourse could be reschematised by non-Aboriginal teachers. Teachers
need to be aware of reciprocal reschematisation and be in constant communication, where
possible, with Aboriginal Islander Education Officers or other Aboriginal people able to
assist, to anticipate it and ensure miscommunication does not occur.
6. One effect of the research has been to focus on reschematisation as a product rather
than (as originally anticipated) as something to be conceived of in deficit terms
(e.g. “distortion”). Rather than treating students’ reschematisations of SAE texts as evidence
of failure to learn, teachers can see them as evidence of alternative readings which can be
explored in their own right as a part of culturally inclusive education.
7. This research suggests that teachers cannot assume that the conceptual implications of
texts they use in the classroom (including texts claiming to have Indigenous subject matter)
are unproblematic. Teachers need to develop ways of questioning texts with students which
will enable cross-cultural interpretations to emerge and be recognised. At the same time,
teachers need to recognise the need to make explicit the SAE schemas which are assumed
by the texts they use. What is called for is a cross-cultural critical literacy.
63
II. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY
a) Implications of this study for the linguistic understanding of Aboriginal English and
bidialectalism
Aboriginal English has been the subject of linguistic investigation for some fifty years and the
understanding of its status as a dialect, and its relationship to Australia’s other major dialects –
SAE (in its formal and colloquial stylistic variants) and Australian Vernacular English – has grown
progressively. We have moved from a narrowly linguistic understanding of the dialect to an
increasingly social, cultural and conceptual understanding, and as we have done so, the complexity
of the relationship between Aboriginal English and SAE has become clearer.
Language is at the same time a physical phenomenon (sounds in space and written symbols on real
or virtual background), a social phenomenon (speech acts exchanged in contexts of use, identifying
different events and different groups and relationships of speakers), a historical phenomenon
(an inheritance passed on within the context of a group with a more or less uniquely shared
history), and a cultural/conceptual phenomenon (a tool to make it possible for communication on
the basis of shared assumptions about reality). The present study is a step forward in the ongoing
study of Aboriginal English, relating, in particular, to the fourth area of inquiry. The following table
attempts to show how it relates to the whole picture, in particular as it has emerged from Western
Australian research.
64
Dimension of language
Object/s of research
Some sources
PHYSICAL
Pronunciation
Malcolm 2004
Vocabulary
Malcolm & Sharifian 2007
Grammar
Kaldor & Malcolm 1979, 1991
Distribution across WA
SOCIAL
Acquisition
Eagleson, Kaldor, & Malcolm 1982
Use in interaction
Malcolm 1996
Use in classroom discourse
Grote 2004
Malcolm & Grote 2007
Use in oral narrative
Malcolm 1979, 1982
Rochecouste & Malcolm 2000
HISTORICAL
CULTURAL/
CONCEPTUAL
Use by youth
Malcolm 2001a
Dialect selection
Malcolm 1994a
principles
Sharifian & Malcolm 2003
Process of development
Malcolm et al. 2002
Development and relation
to pidgins & creoles
Malcolm 1997
Schemas
Malcolm 2000
Malcolm & Koscielecki 1997
Sharifian 2005
Sharifian 2008
Categories
Malcolm 2011
Sharifian 2008
Sharifian 2002a
Metaphor
Sharifian 2001
Sharifian 2006
Sharifian 2010
Malcolm 2002a
Table 4: Aboriginal English research in WA: a selective overview
65
b) Implications of Aboriginal English research in WA for the education of Aboriginal-English
speaking students in SAE literacy
1. Public policy
The Melbourne Declaration states that “literacy and
numeracy and knowledge of key disciplines remain
the cornerstone of schooling for young Australians”
(MCEETYA, 2008). In respect to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander education in particular, there is a
need “to improve SAE (Standard Australian English)
literacy and numeracy outcomes by supporting
the use and development of pedagogies that are
“[Governments across Australia]
affirm the right of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people to sustain
their languages and cultures…”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Education Action Plan (MCEECDYA,
2010, p. 3)
sensitive to and engage with Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander students’ languages and cultures” (MCEECDYA, 2010, p. 14).
There is, then, recognition that the reality that Aboriginal students face in classrooms is influenced
by the interaction between their own cultures and that of the school, and that cross-cultural
teaching and learning programs need to be responsive to these students by addressing this
interaction. This means curriculum learning areas need to be inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander perspectives. What is required is an overall (or metacultural) understanding of the
different demands of the school, implicit in everything from classroom activities and expectations
to language use. Only with such an understanding can one move toward a learning environment
where Aboriginal students’ identities are valued and respected through their languages. As noted
by LoBianco and Freedbody (1997, p. 62):
...“Western” models of literacy and education may be out of tune with crucial aspects
of Aboriginal cultures, beliefs and values. Literacy education for Aboriginal peoples has
a regrettable history of cultural bias and deficit images, of remedial and inappropriate
developmental approaches and assessment models in education resulting in damaging
educational and social outcomes from schooling for Indigenous people.
Moving away from deficit models involves embedding pluralism and diversity in all the
structures of schooling, but also taking seriously the demands for academic achievement which
66
parents are making.
With this embedded pluralism in mind, and the recognition of the right of all Australians to
access higher education and the benefits it brings, there has been a requirement to achieve a
more inclusive foundation for learning. Goal 1 of the Melbourne Declaration (Australia’s current
overarching statement on education) states that all governments and schools should “ensure that
schools build on local cultural knowledge and experience of Indigenous students as a foundation
for learning”. Likewise, the Australian Curriculum includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Histories and Cultures as one of three cross-curriculum priorities to continue through schooling and
across learning areas.
These measures are prerequisites for achieving the “equity and excellence” that the
Melbourne Declaration envisages. It recognises that there are different cultures, Indigenous
and non‑Indigenous, coming together in the classroom and creating valuable opportunities for
learning. This provides opportunities for improved learning of critical literacy and cross-cultural
understanding, both important commodities for social and cultural prosperity in an increasingly
globalised world.
2. Cross-cultural communication: dialect difference and its significance
“Everyone speaks at least one dialect whether it be African American English, Singapore English,
Standard British English or Australian Vernacular English” (Malcolm, 2011a). The dialect that is
spoken by many Aboriginal people is Aboriginal English. The dialect that is taught in Australian
schools is SAE.
The difference between these two dialects can
seem to be minimal at times: many of the words are
A dialect is a “language variety
shared (though, equally, many words are not – see
in which the use of grammar and
Figure 10), and the grammar has similarities as do
vocabulary identifies the regional
the sounds.
or social background of the user”.
(Crystal, 1992, p. 101)
67
Words in Aboriginal English, for example, may take multiple forms:
Word type
Example
Meaning in Australian
English
Aboriginal word +
yorga
Aboriginal meaning
(Nyungar)
Aboriginal word + extra
monartj
police
meaning
(Nyugnar language)
Originally: black cockatoo
Aboriginal word + English
yorgas
girls/women
morphology
girl/woman
(+ plural marker which is
not present in Nyungar)
Aboriginal word from
mudaga/mudagar
car
English words
(from ‘motorcar’)
English word + English
computer
computer
jarred
told off
yous
you (plural)
meaning
English word + Aboriginal
meaning (1)
English word + morphology
change
Figure 10: List of word forms in Aboriginal English (adapted from Malcolm et al., 1999)
There is also a great deal of variety at the less visible level of language and, as seen in this research,
this can lead to misunderstanding in the classroom.
68
Word type
Meaning in Aboriginal
Meaning in Australian
English + conceptualisation
English + conceptualisation
English word + Aboriginal
land (ancestral/group
land (earth, personal
meaning (2) and
ownership, spiritual
ownership, e.g. farm)
conceptualisation
connection)
- land is life
enclosed by man-made
parameters
- land is to be “lived off”
Figure 11: English word + Aboriginal meaning (2) and conceptualisation
The culture of the user is embedded in the language habitually used. This research reflects how
Aboriginal cultural conceptualisations are embedded in the English Aboriginal students’ use.
Extract 11, covered in the description of the fire schema in the previous section (see Chapter II:
page 51), shows that the teacher and the student, G, have different conceptualisations of “fire” –
both speakers understand and relate to fire differently. These different understandings, or cultural
conceptualisations, result in contrasting emotional responses to fire that are invisible at the level of
words or grammar.
These differences in how language is used and perceived can create misunderstandings and
therefore potentially negatively impact students’ learning. It has long been noted that teachers can
have negative perceptions about students’ “personality traits, motivational levels, and academic
potential” if they speak a low-prestige dialect or are part of “an ethnic group whose language
patterns are stigmatised” (Williams et al., 1971, cited in Durkin, 1995, p. 276).
For many Aboriginal students, learning in school entails learning a new dialect; that is, they are
learning a new way of seeing the world, new words, rules of language and concepts. The invisible
aspects of dialect learning (such as differing conceptualisations or pragmatics of the dialect of
the school) mean that the teaching and learning process involves unique challenges, particularly
when compared to the relatively clear language distinctions the student faces when learning an
additional language. This whole process can be disorienting or even confronting for the learner,
69
and, as such, needs to be addressed in the classroom for the learning process to be effective. In
other words, teachers, AIEOs, other teacher assistants and students need to know that different
dialects are in operation. Ignorance of this can cause breakdowns in communication, which impact
on learning as well as participation and motivation.
It has been observed by Malcolm (2010) that Wallace Chafe (1994, p. 38) describes language as
“a pane of glass through which ideas are transmitted from speaker to listener. Under ordinary
circumstances language users are not conscious of the glass itself but only of the ideas that pass
through it.” In other words, it is possible to take language for granted.
As Figure 12 below shows, when two dialects are being used to communicate, the glass becomes
“frosted” to some degree. What is conceptualised and then communicated in one way from one
side of the glass may be received, if at all, quite differently on the other. The wider the conceptual
gap between the dialects, the more impenetrable the frosting on the glass.
The Lexico-semantic System
Standard Australian English
Dialect Filter
Aboriginal English
Our Traditional Land
COUNTRY
collective form
for any country
abstract form - country vs city
political entity, e.g. Australia
LANGUAGE
abstraction - what we speak
collective form for any language
Our Traditional
Language
requires adjective, e.g. French,
to apply to a speciﬁc language
something fed
(e.g. to animals or infants)
FEED
Our Meal
colourful idiom for
a plentiful meal
Abstraction
Experiential
Figure 12: The Dialect Filter: words and their meanings (Malcolm, 2007)
70
3. Valuing the dialect of the student: the foundation of two-way bidialectal education
Valuing the students entails valuing their language and the culture embedded therein. In school
where the assumed dialect is SAE, yet the language most Aboriginal students bring from home is
Aboriginal English, dialect difference and its social implications create a power imbalance.
Aboriginal English and SAE are necessarily a part of the lives of students in schools. The
relationship of these dialects to one another can be, to some extent, oppositional, in that
Aboriginal English is an ethnic dialect (or ethnolect) which has been maintained by Aboriginal
communities to express their distinctiveness as a sociocultural group. It may not be acceptable
to use SAE in some Aboriginal contexts as it could transgress sociocultural norms. Likewise, it is
not generally acceptable to use Aboriginal English within the wider discourse of higher learning.
It is important that the school values the dialect of the student to reduce, as far as possible, any
potential tension between the two dialects. Teachers can provide appropriate contexts for the use
of Aboriginal English, while clarifying for students the expectations of the wider society in respect
to the contexts where only SAE is appropriate. Two-way learning is a way of creating a space for
this kind of mutual recognition to develop.
The term “two-way” has been used in a variety of different educational contexts in Australia, in
particular in the Northern Territory (McConvell, 1982). Here, it is used to describe an approach
adopted by the Western Australian Department of Education where both Aboriginal and
non‑Aboriginal students and educators mutually explore their knowledge about cultural difference,
language variation and how different conceptualisations can interact to change meaning.
They learn from each other by exchanging understandings about their respective schemas. In
classrooms, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators work as two-way teams; they collaborate for
planning, assessment and curriculum development. They join forces for classroom management
and the production of cross-cultural materials; they co-deliver lessons and model code‑switching.
Working as a two-way team is a means of making the implicit explicit through deconstructing
the language, analysing its meanings and exploring how it is used and conceptualised. Aboriginal
students are guided in the development of SAE competence in a manner that affirms their cultural
identities. At the same time, while they develop their own SAE literacy, non-Aboriginal students
71
are provided with opportunities to gain a degree of receptive4 communicative competence in
Aboriginal English. This way, all students can learn about new cultural conceptualisations and
thereby develop competencies to operate safely and efficiently in intercultural contexts.
Effective two-way teaching and learning programs take account of four fundamental dimensions:
relationship building, mutual comprehension building, repertoire building and skill building
(Malcolm & Truscott, forthcoming). The Relationship Building dimension needs to be the first step
and remain in constant operation. However, all dimensions operate at the same time rather than
following any particular order.
1) Relationship building involves motivating communication between Aboriginal and
non‑Aboriginal students by facilitating their contact on a basis of equal respect.
2) Mutual comprehension building requires Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff and students
to recognise where the differences between their respective dialects entail communication
problems and help one another to overcome these problems.
3) Repertoire building includes explicit teaching of differences between Aboriginal English
and SAE, viewing learning SAE as adding to learners’ language/literacy repertoire, as well
as developing some receptive knowledge of Aboriginal English to add to the intercultural
language/literacy repertoire of non-Aboriginal students and teachers.
4) Skill building in SAE involves helping Aboriginal learners to understand the benefits of
learning SAE as an additional dialect which will provide enhanced opportunities for life
and learning, as well as demonstrating high expectations of Aboriginal learners’ ability to
acquire and use the dialect.
5 Receptive refers to the receptive modes of language – listening, reading and understanding – rather than
productive modes of language of speaking and writing.
72
The way these four dimensions play out in a school context is exemplified in Figure 13 below.
Relationship
building
Mutual
comprehension
building
Repertoire
building
Skill building
Aim
School/Principal
To motivate
a)Community contact
communication
- reciprocal visitation
- cross-generation
relationships
b)School policy
- cross cultural
sensitivity
- use of Aboriginal
English
c)Staff development
- enculturation of
staff
d)Bicultural school
environment
Teacher
a)Empowerment of
Aboriginal staff
- shared planning
- appropriate class
role
b)Openness to
appropriate use of
Aboriginal English
(home language – HL)
c)Class Policy
- mutual respect
building
- mutual cultural
learning
- mutual dialect
acceptance
d)Classroom
environment
To facilitate
a)Staffing
a)Classroom
communication
- appointing sufficient
organisation
b)Organising learning in
Aboriginal staff
- providing
small groups and pairs
c)Exploiting bidialectal
appropriate
bicultural staff
competence of
induction
Aboriginal staff
b)Staff development
d)Mutual sociolinguistic
- performance
enabling
e)Developing
management
c)Resourcing
cross‑dialectal
- allocating time
listening skills
- funding resources
To expand
a)Mandating
a)Designated HL time
communication
recognition of prior
b)Bidialectal learning
English learning in
resources (developed
literacy instruction
or modified)
b)Incorporating
c)Bidialectal learning
bidialectal
strategies
competencies in
d)Multi-modal
school assessment
communicative
policy
support
c)Promotion of
e)Celebrating
bias‑free ways of
bidialectalism
referring to HL
To enhance
a)Providing literacy
a)Bridging from
learning
materials for home
established HL literacy
use
to SAE literacy
b)Providing time for
b)Exploit teaching of
modification of SAE
dimensions of dialect
learning materials
contrast
c)Ongoing professional c)Biliteracy learning
development for all
resources
d)Rewarding biliteracy
d)Systematic recording
of SAE progress (using
tools such as the ESU/
ESD Progress map)
e)Bidialectal assessment
Aboriginal Staff
a)Community contact
- with Principal
- independently
b)Providing input to
teacher
- on student
communication
- on cultural
sensitivities
- on learning
materials
c)Providing input
and counselling to
students
Students
a)Reciprocal respectful
relationship building
b)Reciprocal cultural
learning
c)Working in bicultural
pairs and groups
d)Equal access to
empowerment
through election of
school councillors
a)Providing
interpretation and
translation to teacher
b)Providing
interpretation to
students as needed
c)Assisting in modifying
learning materials
d)Assisting in classroom
enculturation of
students
e)Counselling
disaffected students
a)Modelling Aboriginal
English
b)Modelling
code‑switching
c)Alerting teachers
to cross-dialectal
conceptual
mismatches
a)Assisting culturally
different students
with mutual
expression and
understanding
b)Learning from
culturally diverse
materials
c)Acquiring
cross‑dialectal
listening and
comprehension skills
a)Aboriginal students
developing active
bidialectal skills
including biliteracy
and code switching
b)Non-aboriginal
students developing
passive bidialectal
skills
a)Assisting with
a)Peer feedback in pairs
bidialectal assessment
or groups
b)Ongoing feedback to b)Using appropriate
teachers on student
home literacy
learning problems
materials
c)Ongoing feedback
c)Setting progressing
to community on
achievement goals
student progress
Figure 13: Summary of the aims and dimensions of two-way learning
In the following section, some practical steps for planning and implementing two-way bidialectal
education will be suggested to complement these dimensions. This is not meant to be a
comprehensive description; however, key features of a bidialectal program are highlighted.
(For more detailed information about this, refer to Malcolm & Truscott (ibid).)
73
Two-way bidialectal education: how to do it
1) Planning and curriculum development
“What is required are teachers who are aware of what individual students are thinking and
knowing, who can construct meaning and meaningful experiences in light of this knowledge,
and who have proficient knowledge and understanding of what progression means in their
content to provide meaningful and appropriate feedback.” (Hattie, 2009, p. 36)
Working two-way enhances relationships in the classroom, impacts on teacher expectations of the
students and promotes the kind of talk and reflection about teaching and learning that generates
a more positive learning environment. This provides a suitable starting point for planning and
curriculum development, especially for those Aboriginal students who are entering an environment
that is culturally new to them.
Planning involves the following two stages:
1. Identifying Aboriginal English speakers.
2. Developing bidialectal curriculum.
1.1. Identifying Aboriginal English speakers
In some cases, educators may lack clear information as to which students in a class are Aboriginal.
There may be no reliable cues given by factors such as the students’ appearance or residence.
Although general awareness about Aboriginal English is increasing in education, some educators
may be unsure if some of their students are indeed Aboriginal English speakers, especially when
their pronunciation sounds like that of other students and the significance of Aboriginal English
surface features of the dialect, such as intonation, words and grammar, may not be apparent.
One of the important findings of this research is that we need to look below the surface to
see whether or not the student’s orientation is toward Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal ways of
approaching experience. The research supports the view that dialect may be evidenced at the
conceptual level even when it is difficult to discern at the physical level.
74
To identify whether or not a student speaks Aboriginal English and to grasp a more complete
understanding of his/her language abilities, it is important to know how the student communicates
inside and outside of the classroom. Inside, the student may feel linguistically constrained; outside,
the student may set his/her own parameters for communication.
Where available, the AIEO is likely to be able to help identify if the student is an Aboriginal English
speaker through knowledge of the local context and through knowledge about the student’s
family and their language. Where no AIEO is present, talking to the community or other family
members may also assist. A systematic overview of all the features of Aboriginal English is provided
in Malcolm and Grote (2007) and a checklist which can assist teachers to conduct a diagnostic
assessment of their students’ language features is also provided in Konigsberg and Collard (eds)
(2011), and Malcolm (2007).
Teachers can of course make their own deliberate attempts to conduct diagnostic assessments of
the students. Recordings (both audio and audio-visual) of students’ speech can be done in a range
of contexts to capture students using language in daily classroom practices like news telling or
working in groups. Transcribing these speech recordings will allow in-depth analysis and further
reflection.
Figure 14 shows one example of a transcription of an oral recount from this research project.
It reflects the kind of annotations a teacher could make on assessing the language in terms of SAE
and Aboriginal English use. While one piece of work is not enough on which to base decisions
about a student’s competence, it can provide clues as to what SAE language features a student
may/may not have difficulties with.
Other monitoring tools, such as the Western Australian Department of Education’s ESL/ESD
Progress Map, would also be of assistance when planning the areas of SAE on which the student
needs most work.
Often, the evidence of Aboriginal English may emerge when a student responds unexpectedly to
an initiation by the teacher, or produces written expression which shows that key word endings
or function words (like “is”) are lacking. The educator should, then, be slow to judge students’
language as incorrect and quick to look for evidence of dialect.
75
Example transcription: Recall of John Brown text
Figure 14: Annotated transcription of a student recall
76
1.2. Developing a bidialectal curriculum
Having gained an understanding of the students’ abilities in their home language and SAE, it is then
important to work on a teaching and learning plan.
An important element of bidialectal education is to ensure the students feel that their ways of
speaking and seeing the world (and by extension, those of their family) are valued. This involves
validating the students’ use of Aboriginal English and allowing structured use in the classroom.
That is, certain tasks, such as brainstorming, planning, conceptualising, journal writing or story
telling, can be conducted in Aboriginal English; other tasks, such as report writing, delivering
formal speeches or role plays, can be structured in SAE. For added recognition of the bidialectal
nature of the classroom, or indeed the school, educators may consider developing a policy that
promotes equality of respect between the dialects and their speakers. Figure 15 below shows one
way this can be done through the creation of a bidialectal poster made by an early-childhood AIEO.
Example activity for equality of dialect: A brainstorm of words for a bidialectal word chart
(example below) or dictionary that could be compiled over time. These could be used in
vocabulary building activities, print walks and general cross-cultural understanding.
Figure 15: Example of validating home language in the classroom and drawing
attention to dialect difference
Courtesy of Rangeway Aboriginal Intensive Language Centre Trial, 2011
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Once the dialectal competency is better understood and is recognised and valued, then planning
may begin. Clear purpose is necessary to guide the choice of learning activities, explicit teaching
of language features, multiple opportunities to practise language and opportunities to develop
code‑switching skills. Preparation is needed to minimise misunderstandings and maximise
cross‑cultural learning. When planning for success, the students, the activity itself and the
expectations/prior knowledge of the teacher all need to be assessed. One of the aims of two‑way
learning is to “prime the senses” of Aboriginal students to what non-Aboriginal people are
responding to, and at the same time to prime the senses5 of non‑Aboriginal students to what
Aboriginal students are experiencing.
We have adopted the term priming to refer to the process required for preparing a learning activity
in a bidialectal context. It involves three elements:
1. Priming the two-way team: Reflecting on the two-way teams’ mutual conceptual prior
knowledge about a given text or activity.
2. Priming the students: Establishing the conceptual and factual prior knowledge of the
students.
3. Preparing the text: Identifying what new language and conceptualisations need to be taught
for students to be able to access the text.
5 (Palmer, 1996, p. 47)
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Figure 16 shows how these three elements are interconnected.
1. Priming the two-way team
What are our conceptualisations?
3. Preparing the text
2. Priming the students
What conceptualisations
What are the
and language are needed
Aboriginal and
to understand the
text? What needs to be
explicitly taught?
non‑Aboriginal students’
conceptualisations? What
is their prior knowledge?
Figure 16: The three elements of priming
It is important to communicate and to teach non-Aboriginal schemas to Aboriginal students so that
they can share understanding with non-Aboriginal students and gain the required knowledge to
access curriculum materials. The level of explicitness needed will depend on the context, but it is
essential to develop the learners’ cross-cultural understanding.
Explicit teaching
A deep understanding of language requires explicit attention to all the different aspects of
language such as the sounds (phonology), words and their meanings (morphology and semantics),
grammar (syntax), text structures (genres), how language is used (pragmatics) and its conceptual
underpinnings.
Explicit language teaching involves ensuring that students have the required language (SAE) to
access curriculum content, undertake tasks, understand the relevance and purpose of any activity
and produce meaningful texts. For all students, it involves understanding the comprehension
demands of a task or a text and then teaching the key language features and concepts to ensure
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full cross‑cultural understanding of the text. Figure 17 gives two brief examples of explicit teaching
of language and explicit sharing of conceptualisations. (Appendix 4 provides examples of activities
to support scaffolding of all other levels of language.)
Example activity for explicit language: building language through language grids.
Example 1: Developing alternative to “then” using “after + gerund”: e.g. I eat dinner then I
have a rest.
After
eating my dinner
I have a rest.
coming home from school
playing with friends
Example 2: Creating compound sentences and analysing cultural conceptualisations
When the bell rang
they ran indoors
and
got ready for first day assembly.
they lined up
they packed up
Sample questions to elicit conceptualisations:
Where are they? Why are they running? (Interpretation) What does the place look like?
What’s going to happen next? (Prediction)
The modelled language and answers to the questions could be noted on a sheet/poster and
used in a print walk activity (see activities below).
Note: Terms are context based and will vary to suit activities and students’ needs.
Figure 17: Examples of explicit teaching of grammar
The key point here is to ensure that explicit teaching of language occurs at all levels of language,
with special attention given to the cultural conceptual understandings of students.
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Providing opportunities to practise code switching
Code switching is fundamental to bidialectal education as it is the skill that best enables
Aboriginal English speakers to maintain strength of identity while, at the same time, becoming
fully competent in SAE contexts. Code switching skills involve both linguistic and conceptual levels
and are developed unconsciously as well as consciously, in incremental steps over all the years of
schooling and beyond. For bidialectal education to work, it is essential for the learner to become
aware of the existence of two dialects. Code switching skills need to reach a level of consciousness
that enables students to notice code switching, when it happens and how to use it to their
advantage. In teaching, the separation of codes is required when correcting SAE usage so that
students are clear that any corrections made relate to incorrect attempts at producing SAE text,
rather than their use of Aboriginal English.
Obviously, this meta-awareness will develop over time as early childhood learners will not be in
a position to make major distinctions between dialects, but these skills will be enhanced when
deconstructed (again, over time) in a classroom with the guidance of both the Aboriginal and the
non-Aboriginal educator (if available).
Older learners should be encouraged to reflect on the social features of language use, such as the
relationship between language and power. Discussion could then focus on when, why and how
code switching should occur.
Developing materials
Using the knowledge gained from priming the students, two-way teams can create their own
classroom materials or modify existing materials to make them more appropriate for a bidialectal
program. Malcolm et al. (2002) looked at this area by conducting a two-way analysis of over 100
cross‑curricular texts along four dimensions: linguistic analysis; discourse/text/sociolinguistic
analysis; conceptual‑cultural analysis; and pedagogical analysis. Considerations for material
development are summarised below (Malcolm et al., ibid, p. 27):
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i. Linguistic principles
• In using SAE, make the most of the areas where it aligns with Aboriginal English.
• Be consistent in the way the dialect (either SAE or Aboriginal English) is used.
• Develop materials in which SAE is introduced in a controlled way (with due regard to the
ways in which it contrasts with Aboriginal English).
ii. Sociolinguistic/discoursal principles
• The materials should use the respective dialects in settings where they would naturally
occur.
• The dialect/s should be used in the way it/they would naturally be used.
• The materials should not exclude Aboriginal speakers by using SAE in contexts where
Aboriginal English is appropriate.
iii. Conceptual/cultural principles
• The major categories and imagery should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.
• Story/event schemas should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.
• Proposition schemas (i.e. assumed wisdom) should be accessible to Aboriginal readers.
iv. Pedagogical principles
• The communication represented in the materials should be authentic.
• The materials should be adaptable to pedagogical exploitation.
• The materials should be approachable for the learner.
Practical implications for this are discussed below in How to exploit culturally inclusive and
exclusive tests.
Clear purpose for learning activities
One key factor in bidialectal education is the need to clarify in the planning stage which essential
elements to include so that Aboriginal students are provided with plenty of opportunities to extend
their SAE repertoire. A clear purpose should be maintained during language activities so teachers
know whether to engage in bidialectal exploration for deeper knowledge of language variation
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and its effect on meaning and comprehension, or whether to incrementally extend students’ SAE
competency.
The reason why students are doing a particular learning activity and what is needed for success in
that activity should be clear. Planning should also provide for plenty of opportunities for recycling
SAE language that is new to the students and for continuous evaluation of student progress. Being
clear about the purpose assists students to evaluate how they are faring and enables two-way
teams to remain responsive to their particular students’ needs.
Example activity for explicit purpose: Yarning time
News Telling is a common classroom practice that may be socially and culturally confronting
for some Aboriginal students. Instead, Yarning time can involve structured discussion sitting in
a circle, around a fire (made from sticks brought in by the students, and red and yellow pieces
of scrap paper). Students are allowed to add to each other’s yarns by contributing if they
share the yarn being told. They are also allowed to remain seated. The explicit purpose is to
share information with friends/peers.
Students can then be explicitly taught, over time, the required SAE language and protocols for
News Telling, which would take place in another part of the classroom. The explicit purpose is
to communicate news like on a news channel.
Courtesy of Medina Primary School, 2010
Evaluating, selecting and interpreting texts
Evaluating and selecting texts on which teaching
and learning is based requires conscious attention
“The reading of texts that do not
of the two-way team. Texts can be interpreted
reflect the cultural background
in different ways, by different people and
assumptions and constructs as the
different cultures. The common literacy skills of
reader can be time-consuming and
interpretation and prediction rely on familiarity of
laborious.” (Steffensen, 1988)
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context and language. Learners may need to be explicitly taught the required language and related
schemas to fully understand the text, and so teachers need to take this into consideration.
It is impossible for everyone to be aware of all the different cultural interpretations of language.
What is possible, however, is to be prepared for them. Before introducing texts to the classroom
and as a part of the priming process, two-way teams need to reflect on questions such as:
• What cultural understandings support the text?
• Are there particular characters, objects, events that have an underlying meaning that may
be viewed differently by Aboriginal students?
• How can we work two-way to build shared understanding?
It is said that a reader needs to understand at least 95% of running words in a text in order to
comprehend the text and to learn new words from context (Nation, 2006). However, as we have
seen in the case of Aboriginal-English speaking students, words can have different implications
in the text as different proposition schemas might be at play. This rule of thumb is therefore very
difficult to apply, especially since both non-Aboriginal teachers and Aboriginal students may be
unaware that they do not share certain understandings and meanings. Teachers will therefore need
to pay particular attention to the meaning (for themselves and the students) of possibly culturally
loaded comprehension words, such as understand, interpret and predict, and how these words can
be carried out when making judgements about the suitability of classroom texts.
Figure 18 shows a two-way procedure for assessing
and interpreting a text. This example procedure is
a key factor of priming an activity and shows the
kind of initial conversation that can take place in
Proposition schemas: statements
of the implicit understanding and
relationships behind a concept.
a two-way team when deciding on a text. As the
story progresses, possible questions (these would of course depend on the story) and the possible
proposition schemas are discussed. A similar discussion would accompany the selection of all kinds
of texts (such as informational and persuasive).
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Story
Possible questions
Possible proposition
schemas
Once upon a
time, in a land
far away, lived
an old man
What kind of story is this going to be?
Aboriginal:
What are your predictions? Why?
•It is not good for a man to
What does the
and his dog…
land
look like?
live away from his people
man
•It is not good to live alone
dog
•It is not good to be away
Why was the man living alone with his
dog?
from country for too long
Non-Aboriginal:
•It shows a pioneering
spirit for an individual
to leave home to go far
away
One day, he
said to his dog:
Why is he talking to his dog?
Does he always talk to the dog?
Aboriginal:
•It is not normal for a man
to make plans with an
animal
Non-Aboriginal:
•It is normal that animals
can be treated like they
are a part of human plans
“It’s time we
moved on...”
Why is it time to move on?
Is he always moving on?
Aboriginal:
•Travelling is often a part
of life
Non-Aboriginal:
•Travelling may happen if
the man is in trouble
Figure 18: Example two-way priming procedure for interpreting a narrative text
This strategy allows educators to quickly assess the suitability of a text (in this case a children’s
book) for the class or learner. This informal analysis then also needs to be complemented by a
85
language overview sheet. The overview is developed by going through the book, page by page, and
writing down all the different conceptualisations and language features, such as verbs, pronouns
and/or whatever other features are deemed to be relevant. This is particularly effective if done as a
two-way team as it allows for two different cultural interpretations of a text.
Figure 19 is an example of what a completed language overview could look like for John Brown,
Rose and the Midnight Cat.
Book title: JOHN BROWN, ROSE AND THE MIDNIGHT CAT
Published by Picture Puffin
Author: JENNY WAGNER
Singular/plural in nouns
(man/men)
Cat, milk, dog, garden, line, house,
bed, shadow, pear tree, knitting,
milk bottles, clock, bowl of milk,
book, glass, curtains, kitchen,
breakfast, supper, supper time,
arm, chair
Common nouns:
Rose, John Brown
Singular/plural in verbs
(there is/there are: She had/ they
have)
I’m, we are, there is
Questions
Don’t you see him now?
What’s that in the garden, John
Brown?
Isn’t he beautiful? All day? Will
the midnight cat make you
better?
Past tense
Died, lived, loved, looked after,
sat, watched, dozed, kept
company, looked out, went, saw,
shut, wound up, took out, got up,
jumped up, followed, tipped out,
were, shone, pulled shut, did not
get up, waited, went, got up, sat,
purred
Past continuous: was thinking
Other tenses
(Direct speech) are, don’t see, ‘m,
‘s, don’t need, is, don’t you see (him
now?), ‘m sick
Imperative: go, look, get up, let him in,
Future: will… make won’t let
Present continuous: I’m staying
Infinitive: to stay away
Conditional: he could
Quantification
Some, an hour past
Possession
his
Pronouns
She, he
Adjectives
Ragged, beautiful, midnight
Sounds
/s/slipped
/sh/shadow
/z/Rose
Preparation
By the fire, on the arm of the chair,
in the kitchen, against the ragged sky,
with her dog, in the garden
Word meaning/Other
meaning
Winding up a clock
[wind up: person = annoy/
an act = finish]
Supper time
Conceptualisations/scheme
Kitchen in
western culture/
non‑western
Died
Winding clock vs
changing battery
Taking milk
bottles out
cat → warning dog →
protection
rooing
fire → safe,
midnight →
bad things
healer
Metaphor/simile
Eyes like lamps
Pragmatics
(can be associated with the
illustrations)
Look – to bring attention
vs. reprimand “All day and
forever”
Figure 19: Language Overview sheet for John Brown, Rose and
the Midnight Cat, by Jenny Wagner
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Once the overview is completed, educators can make important judgements about the suitability
of the text. Figure 20 looks at the example language overview (Figure 19) and lists some possible
judgements about the text and teaching implications, especially in relation to the Aboriginal
learners’ needs:
Judgement: this text has…
Implication: this text is…
•lots of examples of the
•good for exposing the student to the past tense in SAE
past tense
•lots of nouns
•not good for students for practising present tense in SAE
•made up of very location and culture specific words
•Considerations: Will our students be familiar with these
nouns? Which ones need to be taught explicitly? Which
ones can lead to deeper cultural explanations?
•the context of “putting out milk bottles” will be unfamiliar
to all students
•potential for conflicting
conceptualisations
•good for drawing out different conceptualisations
•Considerations: How will students view death, the cat,
fire and the dog? How can we capitalise on the students’
different cultural conceptualisations for the benefit of all
students? What can we discuss when priming the students?
Figure 20: Example of grammatical and conceptual judgements based on the language overview.
2) Implementing the teaching and language program
Time is a precious commodity for any teacher, and time invested in providing students with the
opportunity for exploration and practice on a deep level is especially important for learners of SAE.
For students to learn new concepts, new ways of interpretation and language use, learning needs
to be presented in an iterative manner with plenty of opportunity for the practice and recycling
of new language. The benefit of investing time in the preparation of the program (by the two-way
team) will reap rewards in the long term.
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2.1. Setting up bidialectal communication activities
Students need to understand when and why to use
which dialect. Bidialectal communication activities
“To understand a word as its speaker
entail using Aboriginal English to bridge to SAE,
intended or to use it appropriately,
incorporating code switching abilities between the
it is necessary to know the schema
dialects.
or schemas to which it belongs in a
particular context of use.” (Palmer,
It is important that activities provide opportunities
1996, p. 66)
for exploration of language use and new language
structures. The level and extent of associated
discussions about purpose will depend on the context. Example questions could be:
• Why is it important to be able to tell the difference between two dialects?
• Why is only one dialect appropriate for a particular task, such as writing a report of
scientific findings?
• Is it appropriate to use Aboriginal English when sending text messages?
• When can texts in Aboriginal English be published?
• What are Aboriginal English texts most useful for?
2.2. How to promote SAE competence through scaffolding
Scaffolding requires learning to be targeted at a
point just, but not completely, beyond the abilities
of the learner. It is with the temporary help of
the teacher, through explicit teaching, that the
student’s learning progresses.
“What the child is able to do in
collaboration today he will be able
to do independently tomorrow.”
(Vygotsky, 1987, p. 211)
When planning to scaffold language, all levels of
language should be looked at. Gibbons (2002) notes that focused teaching of phonics, spelling and
grammar is important, but should not “compromise interactive and meaning-driven classroom
practices” (2002, p. 132). She lists three main principles to consider:
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1. Move from whole to part (and then back to whole).
2. Move from meaning to form (and then back to meaning).
3. Move from familiar to unfamiliar (and then back to familiar).
A further point to bear in mind is that cultural conceptualisations will bear on all levels of language
as they can be instantiated through a range of linguistic (and non-linguistic) devices such as sounds,
words and sentences. All these areas can be taught concurrently to provide rich language learning.
The case example below (Figure 21) illustrates the kind of steps that could precede learning
activities (see Appendix 4 for additional examples) focusing on all the levels of language. Within the
three basic stages of this example, scaffolding progresses over two stages: student’s language (the
familiar) and the new or target language (the unfamiliar).
Case example: Mini Lesson: Questioning/Requesting information
Context:
• Class has already covered a variety of question forms. Class has covered metalanguage
(e.g. verb and noun).
• Teacher has picked up on the use of a particular Aboriginal English (AE) utterances
(you got crayon?) and consequently wants to specifically focus on questions for
making requests.
Step I: Elicit prior knowledge:
Brainstorm different kinds of request questions (from AE and SAE perspectives) using, for
example, props for role plays. Teacher writes AE questions on one side of board and SAE on
other side of board.
Stage 1 – Students’ language:
1. You got crayon?
2. Have you got a crayon?
(Accompanying this would be the discussion about: when 1 and 2 may be used for different
purposes, such as a yes/no question [do you have a crayon?] as opposed to an indirect
request [can you give me a crayon?]; knowledge of context; and other influencing factors.
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Step II: Establish new knowledge/target language:
Teacher: The verb is important to make it clear it’s a request. To ask a question in SAE, you
need to say, “can you give me a crayon?” Model and drill.
Stage 2: Target language 1 (verbs in sentence) (provided by teacher)
Can
you
give
me
a
crayon
lend
pencil
pass
sharpener
please?
Elicit further examples (for example, of nouns). Have students come and write on board,
ensuring they write on appropriate side of the board. It will be important to show that this is
a formula that they can use in lots of cases, e.g. nouns.
Target language 2 (nouns)
Can
you
give
me
a
crayon
lend
pencil
pass
sharpener
please?
Step III: Practise:
Run activities across modes (for example, role plays, reading scripts and sentence
construction)
Follow-up lesson (sometime in the future when needed): “could you give…?”
Figure 21: Case example of a mini questioning lesson
2.3. How to exploit culturally inclusive and exclusive texts
Exposure of students to a range of genres needs to be accompanied by appropriate support to
develop the use of those genres. The support comes in the form of explicit teaching of the genre’s
particular language features. Looking at the language used in different genres is important when
understanding inclusivity in texts.
Inclusivity (or exclusivity, depending on the viewpoint) in texts occurs at the content level (what
matter is being treated and how is it depicted?) and the linguistic level. Often, the linguistic level is
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interpreted at the level of grammar or nouns, for example, using loaded terms which imply some
kind of hierarchy (underdeveloped or third world countries), or terms that highlight a particular
race or gender (chairman vs. chairperson). However, as this research has shown, exclusion can also
occur at other levels of language.
Malcolm et al. (2003) found that texts which would seem to be inclusive at the content level for
Aboriginal students displayed linguistic features (such as the style of the text and which verb tenses
were used) that actually excluded Aboriginal-English speaking readers. Summarised below are
features of SAE that do not occur in Aboriginal English. Lack of familiarity with these features will
have an exclusionary impact on the Aboriginal-English speaking listener/reader. Figure 22 looks at
some of these language features with respect to the texts used in this research project.
Existential clauses
all the birds were the same colour (The Magic Colours)
Embedded clause and
which came through the cracks of the basket (Ping)
conceptualisation (through
the shadow of)
The next night Rose saw the midnight cat as he slipped
through the shadow of the pear tree (John Brown, Rose
and the Midnight Cat)
Passive and nominalisation
The King was amused at the sight of the black cat in yellow
boots (Puss in Boots)
Non-Subject Verb Object
Down the freeway the family drove (Bushfire)
ordering
Multiple Attributive Adjectives
Strange arching shapes (Bushfire)
and conceptualisation
Contingent –ing clauses
where reapers were busy, cutting the wheat (Puss in Boots)
Figure 22: Example language features that may be unfamiliar to Aboriginal English speakers
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In addition to these linguistic features are the cultural conceptual elements that can exclude or
include students; this has been the subject of this research.
Having identified the language competence of the students and deduced potentially problematic
language features, it is possible to devise a targeted teaching and learning plan that addresses
these points. Following the main considerations for materials development (p.16), Malcolm et al.
(2003, p. 27) outline several implications for implementing this plan:
i. Materials which have an Indigenous focus are not necessarily inclusive, in that inclusivity is
shown in linguistic choices not only content.
ii. Materials concerned with non-Indigenous learning are not necessarily exclusive in that
Aboriginal students want to be seen as included in the wider world.
iii. Aboriginal educators need to be involved in materials evaluation and selection.
iv. By using critical pedagogical approaches (such as the diagnostic assessment of their
students’ language features and the language overview discussed above), teachers can
make good use of materials even where they are exclusive of Indigenous perspectives.
v. Most materials currently available require the teacher (with the help of students and
AIEOs or Aboriginal teacher) to make links with Aboriginal English as it exists in the lives of
contemporary Aboriginal people.
vi. The unevenness of the present availability of inclusive materials leaves room for two-way
materials development involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators.
2.4. How to give appropriate feedback
One area of concern among teachers is how to teach students the correct form in SAE without
seeming to “correct” their Aboriginal English; in other words, how to ensure students become
aware of forms that are “mistakes” in SAE when these are not “mistakes” in Aboriginal English. For
this, it is especially important to remind students that two dialects may be in operation. Students
need to be made aware of the SAE way of saying what they mean, while ensuring their dignity in
respect to the use of their own language remains intact. This may require discussion and some
explicit teaching.
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Students’ use of Aboriginal English, for appropriate purposes, can be valued in the classroom just
as the appropriate use of SAE is. If a student knows that the purpose is to produce a text in SAE,
then the teacher can either act immediately or at a later time. They can take note of the language
point, for example, use of “we bin go” instead of “we went”, and address it generally with the
group, or address it immediately but intimately with the student saying, “This is a correct response,
is it also correct in SAE? How can we say this in SAE?” The student can be encouraged to remember
previous lessons, or refer to displays on the walls of the classroom.
It is important to recognise that students do need feedback, and that it is not helpful to Aboriginal
learners to avoid pointing out their failure to use SAE correctly for fear of cultural and linguistic
sensitivities. If students are secure in the knowledge that their first dialect is respected and
accepted in appropriate contexts, they will not be threatened by having their attempts at using the
second dialect (SAE) corrected (in an appropriate way) when necessary. Indeed, such correction
shows the student that the educator is concerned with helping them with their learning.
2.5. Assessment
Assessment is a vital component of the teaching and learning cycle and as such needs to be
administered as appropriately and as effectively as possible. Obviously, the purpose of the
assessment will determine how it can be used, and while competence in SAE is an ultimate target
in educational settings, it is important to remember that ability in SAE language represents only a
fraction of the students’ overall cognitive and linguistic ability (Figure 23).
AE
Potentially unacknowledged and
unrecognised knowledge
SAE
Acknowledged and
recognised
Potentially assumed
linguistic/cultural knowledge
Figure 23: A view of the cross-over between Aboriginal English and SAE in the classroom
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Most conventional tests used in education were designed using norms collected from mostly
monolingual speakers over time and are therefore unable to showcase the complex knowledge
and experiences that lie outside such norms. However, the students’ own and different knowledge
and experiences are what will ultimately drive their learning. It is therefore important that time
and effort be invested in working out what the students know and what they might need to learn
by referring to the tools such as the diagnostic assessment of students’ language features, the
language overview and the Western Australian ESL/ESD Progress Map mentioned above.
An important part of the role of the educator is to develop dialect-sensitive modes of testing and of
reporting on test results. Ideally, the bidialectal student should be receiving credit for linguistic and
sociolinguistic competencies in both dialects rather than, as is commonly the case, being assessed
as a monodialectal SAE speaker. The reporting of assessment in SAE should recognise the principle
of staging, i.e. that the student will move in a graduated way towards command of the second
dialect.
III Summary and conclusion
This report has attempted to show the main findings of this research into Aboriginal-English
speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy materials in Australian English and to
show how these findings might be applied, together with prior findings about Aboriginal English
and two-way bidialectal education.
We have seen how, in a significant number of cases, Aboriginal students’ recalls of stories to which
they had been exposed reflected their reliance on schemas that were different to those drawn
upon or intended by the author(s) of the original texts. This phenomenon appears to have been the
result of what we have termed reschematisation of linguistic input, which is the understanding of
information based on schemas available in the student’s conceptual repertoire.
The study was based on an analysis of responses to five texts in a limited range of genres,
including materials from traditional European, Asian and Australian sources, both Aboriginal and
non‑Aboriginal.
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Bearing in mind the limited corpus of texts included in the study, the findings reveal that the
reschematisations made by the participating Aboriginal students relied on a limited number
of Aboriginal cultural schemas, such as the scary things schema (a class of Aboriginal Spiritual
schemas) and the warning schema. The resulting interpretations made by the students from this
study reflect an alternative understanding of the events within the narrative, or alternative roles
for the main characters. Overall, the findings of this study lend further support to the significant
role played by cultural schemas in cognitive processing, in particular in cross-cultural contexts.
Educational implications
The findings of this project have been related to existing research into Aboriginal English conducted
in Western Australia, and to the application of such research in the teaching and learning of
Aboriginal students. The implications of present and past research have been considered together
to give a more complete pedagogical picture and assist educators working as two-way teams in
delivering effective SAE language and literacy programs.
In general, the findings of the study reported upon here support the relevance of the knowledge
of background culture to the development of a school curriculum, in the sense that the choice of
culturally relevant materials impacts students’ processing and comprehension of texts depending
on how closely they share conceptualisations with the author of the text. The findings also
support and extend previous research findings that suggested the likelihood of miscommunication
between Aboriginal-English speaking students and school literacy materials on one hand, and
miscommunication with non-Aboriginal teachers on the other. The educational implications of
this are profound and relate to every aspect of educational life for Aboriginal students, from
curriculum presentation to curriculum delivery. The results of the project conducted prior to the
one reported here (Sharifian et al., 2004) revealed evidence that some non-Aboriginal educators
were unfamiliar with schemas that informed the narratives produced by Aboriginal students, and
as a result misunderstood the nature of their students’ recalls, in some cases significantly. The
findings of the project reported upon here suggest that Aboriginal students are likely to draw on
their own cultural schemas when making sense of texts that are not otherwise culturally accessible
to them. Overall, the findings of this study reiterate the key recommendation for the education of
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Aboriginal students put forward in the last study: that is, there is “an urgent need for professional
development and the development of [linguistically inclusive] curriculum materials to demonstrate
the importance of cultural understanding and schemas in the comprehension of narrative texts”
(Sharifian et al., 2004, p. 28).
Working two-way allows for numerous opportunities for all students to become accustomed
to consciously exploring different ways of thinking and thus develop their cross-cultural
understanding. For Aboriginal students, it offers a chance to learn another form of English that
potentially allows them to access immense rewards. Importantly, it also allows for teachers,
AIEOs and teaching assistants to develop their understanding of all their students so that they can
provide more effective and positive learning experiences and encourage meaningful cross-cultural
critical literacy across the board.
96
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A PP E N D IC E S
Appendix 1: Student Background Sheets
Aboriginal-English speaking students’ (mis)understanding of school literacy
materials in Australian English Project
Student background sheet
Name of school: _ ___________________________________________________
Name of student: _ ___________________________________________________
Date of birth:
_ ___________________________________________________
Year level:
_ ___________________________________________________
Background Information:
Please write down any background that you know about the student that might be
relevant to the research and to understanding the data given by the student.
Academic Performance: Example: Is the student attentive and keen to learn? In
your opinion, is he/she smart? How is the student performing in his/her studies
at school?
108
Staff/student interaction: Example: Have you noticed any kinds of
miscommunication or misunderstanding between any teachers or other
staff members and this student or between non-Aboriginal students and this
student?
Social: Example: How does the student behave at school? Does he/she mix
mainly with other family members or has this student befriended other
students?
Family/Upbringing: What is the student’s family like? Example: Nyungar/Yamaji
father and wadjella mother from Northam. Lives with aunty in Perth.
109
Other info: Any other information that may affect the way the student responds
to the task. (Please expand this document in length as required.)
110
Appendix 2: Table of comparison of conceptualisations
Information from
Target conceptualisation +
Aboriginal conceptualisation
original text
Non‑Aboriginal students
(from Aboriginal students’
recalls)
Rose:
•An old lady
•Widow
John Brown:
•dog
•Widow [and therefore possibly
lives alone]
•Widow [and therefore possibly
lives with family]
•A woman/girl
•A woman/girl
•John Brown is jealous of the
•A man
cat
•The ghost of the dead husband
•Is the husband
[Companion/guardian/
•Doesn’t like cats [and vice
protector]
versa]
•[Dogs can sense evil spirits]
•[John Brown protects Rose
from evil spirit/the cat]
Midnight Cat:
•black
•drinks milk
Fire:
•Doze by the fire
•Sat by fire
•furry, cute
•a warning signal
•kitten
•a bad spirit
•likes milk
•annoys people
•female
•female or male
Relevance in narrative:
Relevance in narrative:
circumstantial
substantial
•[fireplace in a home]
•[healer/protector against
spirits]
•[fire in the backyard/a camp/
outside]
111
Appendix 3: Comparison of family schema from
The Story about Ping
Aboriginal students
Non-Aboriginal students
Order
Original
Nathan
Jayden
Jordy
Sue
Nathan
Jack
1
mother
42 cousins
42 aunts
11 aunies
mum
mum,
mum,
dad
dad
and father
2
3
sisters and
7 something
aunts,
42
sister,
37
brothers,
3 brothers
else
uncles
cousins
brother
cousins
sisters
11 aunts
sisters,
7 uncles
father
and 7
brother
uncles
4
42 cousins
112
Appendix 4: Example activities to support scaffolding of
all levels of language
6
Activities should be planned two-way to ensure relevance. For example, running a comparative/
superlative suffix activity using deadly → deadlier→ deadliest will need two-way consideration as
“deadly” has different (and opposing) meanings in Aboriginal English and SAE.
The sequence of the items within these levels does not imply a particular order.
Level of language
Example activity (to modify as appropriate depending on learners’
age group)
Stress/Intonation
Songs, poems
(Prosody)
Shadow reading
Phonology
Minimal pairs (pat/bat, tin/din) games
Final letter clusters (that’s, first) : Sounds grid, Chinese Whispers
Words (Morphology)
Roots of words (Greek and Latin origin and related meanings):
class activity – start a word bank on the wall where such words are
collected over the unit/term
Prefixes (mis-, re-, pre-, un-): affix games
Sentences (Syntax)
Question forms: What’s the question? (accompanied by comparison
of questioning in Aboriginal English and SAE)
SAE Text cohesion: Cloze activity; jumbled sentences to practise
linking in SAE between sentences and paragraphs (first, second,
next, but, because, etc.) (accompanied by comparison with, where
possible, schema-based text cohesion in Aboriginal English)
Text form/Structure
Compare Aboriginal English and SAE narrative structures. Contrast
(Genres)
SAE structure (orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution,
coda) with Aboriginal English narratives which are driven by different
schemas (e.g. yarning, hunting, travel, etc.) (See Rochecouste &
Malcolm, 2000)
6 For additional ideas on what and how to scaffold, refer to the Tracks to Two-Way Learning (2011)
113
Level of language
Example activity (to modify as appropriate depending on learners’
age group)
The way language is
Role plays illustrating different ways language (such as phrases or
used (Pragmatics)
words) can vary in meaning according to context and the background
and/or intent of the speaker
Studying audio-visual texts looking at language use, possible
misinterpretations, etc.
Cultural conceptual
Students draw, discuss and/or develop skits based on their
responses/interpretations to texts (including visual texts). Students
can start analysing individually through drawing, writing and/or
speaking, then move to pair work to compare and contrast their
representations and develop a joint representation of the story.
114
151 Royal Street
East Perth WA 6004
Telephone: (08) 9264 4111
© 2012 Farzad Sharifian and the Department of Education WAA

Understanding stories my way - The Department of Education

Transcription

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