Developing values in Australian community language schools

Abstract

This research investigates the contribution that attending community language (CL) school makes to the development of CL students’ values. The research clarifies the nature of the community-run CL learning experience for students in their early high school years. It identifies students’ broader consciousness of values, the opportunities provided by school organisers and teachers to promote community-specific values, the influence of CL peers on values development, and the way in which CL school operations support and build on family language policy (FLP). It describes the experiences that students have at CL school, and analyses how their CL school experiences contribute to language socialisation and through this to the development of their values. This research answers the question: How does attending community language (CL) school contribute to the development of CL students’ values?
A comparative case study with an ethnographic approach, was used in this study to explore CL students’ experiences and their development of values in three community-run CL schools (Japanese, Polish and Tamil) in Canberra, Australia. Equal time of 10 weeks was spent in the three schools, and data was gathered through participant observation, focus groups, and interviews with students, their parents, and their CL school teachers and organisers, and the study of related artefacts. Student participants were aged 12-16 years, were mostly background speakers of the community language, and had attended Australian mainstream schooling for at least five years. Data was triangulated through interviews with the students’ families, their teachers and school organisers. The results were analysed by school through a process of deductive and inductive thematic analysis, then comparatively, across schools.
The study found that students’ exposure to varied skills learning, language learning, and social and cultural learning all had an impact on their values development, and that the impact tied back to how values were modelled in the school, and to a student’s relationship with the people doing the modelling. The main influences were teachers, peers and school families, both their own and other students’ families. Teachers’ teaching styles and what they emphasised determined the skills and specific language learned, and the values that were transmitted through these. Teachers consciously pursued a ‘pedagogy of empowerment’, which differed in nature, by school. This ranged from upskilling for participation in Japanese society to actively drawing on mainstream learning skills in the Polish and Tamil schools.
Peers, in addition to keeping students motivated to continue attending CL school, provided a filter through which students could interpret the values and experiences of home, CL school, and their broader lives. Parents’ core roles in CL schools provided a further filter and a connection between values experienced at CL school and family values already established in early childhood.
The study highlighted additional values-related opportunities that emerged from the CL experience: The school was a hub for families and students, as the jump-off point for encountering other community organisations and experiences. The study found that students were highly aware of Australian mainstream school values, but family values were their main point of reference when making important decisions. Students’ experiences in the CL school and broader CL community in which it was embedded also resulted in a level of social and emotional learning and enhanced self- and social-awareness, building blocks of personal and social capability, one of the seven general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2024a). The CL community environment gave rise to new hybrid values and practices that reflected the needs or opportunities of the Australian setting.
The main implication of the study is that CL education is achieving outcomes above and beyond its brief of teaching community language and culture. Australian CL learning dovetails with students’ broader education, and makes a contribution to the development of students’ skills and personal and social competencies including values. By exploring CL school learning outcomes in more detail, it is possible to normalise CL education as an additional pathway to acquiring a range of 21st century skills, in addition to the development of community language.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Elke STRACKE (Supervisor) & Eleni PETRAKI (Supervisor)