Page 151 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2008
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Next week I will open a conference for over 100 principals and language teachers called Language Matters, where national and international language experts will work with our teachers on ways to strengthen languages education in our schools. In 2008 and in the years to come, the department of education will also explore a range of innovative staffing models. Amongst these, concepts of clustering the delivery of languages in particular schools will be trialled. The purpose of such an approach is to ensure that the student who learns a language in one primary school is able to pursue the study of that language in high school and college as a linear or continuous undertaking. Schools will also have the opportunity to apply for grants of up to $5,000 to assist them to purchase quality teaching resources for languages, and schools establishing a new languages program will also receive a one-off resources grant.
The importance of intercultural understanding is reflected in the new ACT curriculum framework Every chance to learn and this places our curriculum at the forefront of contemporary educational practice. The core content about intercultural understanding in the new framework has three focus areas. The first is about understanding how individual and group identity is shaped by culture and that this happens in all cultures. It also involves making the transition from seeing one’s own cultural values as the only possible ones to understanding that all thinking and behaviours exist within a cultural framework.
The second focus is on developing the mental preparation needed for meaningful intercultural communication. Such mental preparation involves both knowledge about the culture and the disposition to engage with it. As students engage with other cultures, they are more likely to develop an empathetic willingness to step outside their own cultural framework into another’s. They also gain understanding of how specific cultural practices, such as forms of address and use of non-verbal cues, influence communication.
The third focus is on understanding intercultural communication itself, in which at least some participants are operating in their second or subsequent language. Students learn about language and language variance and how speakers using a second or third language are influenced in some ways by their first language.
I propose to move as an amendment to Dr Foskey’s motion to omit paragraph (2) and to substitute a new paragraph (2) stating “notes that the ACT government (a) has ensured a key element of the curriculum delivered in ACT schools is an engagement with other cultures through learning an additional language—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Barr, we will need a copy of the amendment.
MR BARR: I will read it and then do that, Mr Speaker. It continues with “(b) is providing sustained and meaningful language learning experiences for students in ACT schools, (c) has increased funding for languages in ACT schools and for professional development for teachers, and (d) has mandated that languages are taught in all ACT public schools by 2010”.
I table that amendment. So Dr Foskey’s motion, as amended, would show that this Assembly and the government remain firmly committed, with spirit and action, to
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