VicTESOL Symposium 2018
VicTESOL Symposium 2018
Language as a Resource
EAL educators support the language learning of EAL learners in their settings in a range of ways. This includes by linking into curriculum resources, employing a range of pedagogical strategies, building school-community partnerships and by supporting the use of the first language as a means to learn English. The aim of the 2018 VicTESOL symposium is to focus on this connection between learning English as an additional language whilst supporting the development and maintenance of learners’ first language(s).
Many EAL learners view the use of more than one language as a normal part of everyday life. This symposium aims to acknowledge the importance of first language development for EAL learners. The intent is to promote the development of first languages so as to actively support multilingual practices whilst remembering that children, young people and adults learn in different ways and come to educational settings from diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Melbourne Symposium 2018
20 August 2018
8:30am – 4:00pm
Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership
603-615 Queensberry St, North Melbourne, 3051
Ticket Prices
$130 – VicTESOL Member
$170 – Non-member
Membership & Ticket Deal
$200 – VicTESOL Membership and ticket purchase
Event Running Order
| 8:30am – 9:00am | Registration |
| 9:00am – 9:15am | Introduction |
| 9:15am – 10:15am | Keynote: Dr Julie Choi |
| 10:20am – 10:50am | Session 1 |
| 10:50am – 11:20am | Morning Tea |
| 11:25am – 11:55pm | Session 2 |
| 12:00pm – 12:30pm | Session 3 |
| 12:30pm – 1:45pm | Lunch |
| 1:50pm – 2:20pm | Session 4 |
| 2:25pm – 3:25pm | Keynote: Prof Alex Kostogriz |
| 3:30pm – 4:00pm | Afternoon Tea & Networking |
Session Options
Session 1
Area |
Presenters |
| New Arrivals | Yvette Slaughter |
| Early Years/Primary | Daniel Thomas |
| Secondary | Julia Lippold & Annette Ambesi |
| Adult/Community | Rebecca Robinson |
Session 2
Area |
Presenter/s |
| Teaching & Learning Cycle Project | Beverly Derewianka & Participants |
| Early Years/Primary | Melodie Davies & Carolina Cabezas-Benalcazar |
| Secondary | Leah Kontos |
| Adult/Community | Cathy Gill & Rei Chin |
Session 3
Area |
Presenter/s |
| Teaching & Learning Cycle Project | Beverly Derewianka & Participants (Cont.) |
| Early Years/Primary | Sara Stefani & Karen Bonson |
| Secondary | Melissa Barnes |
| Adult/Community | Ken De Wal |
Session 4
Area |
Presenter/s |
| New Arrivals | Mervi Kaukko |
| Early Years/Primary | Michelle Andrews |
| Secondary | Michiko Weinmann |
| Adult/Community | Joanne Goodman |
For detailed session information and speaker biographies click here.
Keynote Speakers
Dr Julie Choi
Biography
Dr Julie Choi is a Lecturer in Education (Additional Languages) at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has worked in the areas of adult English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in China and Japan, and in professional Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher development with tertiary-level students in Australia.
Dr Choi is interested in reflective and reflexive writing styles using autoethnographic approaches. Her research projects focus on plurilingual pedagogies, the intersection of language, culture and identity, and the language learning needs of refugee women and youths in Australia.
Dr Choi is co-editor of the book Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity (2010) and sole author of the book Creating a Multivocal Self: Autoethnography as Method (2017).
Keynote Abstract
Language as a resource or using languages resourcefully? Why perspective matters
Over the past decade, ‘The Multilingual Turn’ has brought about new ways of thinking about language and language use. In this presentation, I discuss a number of projects I have been involved in over recent years investigating the language practices of multilingual learners both in and out of the classroom. These different projects show how learners’ linguistic and non-linguistic resources are activated resourcefully in and out of the classroom. I will make the case that the concept of ‘resourcefulness’ is more helpful and productive than the rather static understanding of ‘language as a resource’.
Professor Alex Kostogriz
Biography
Alex Kostogriz is Professor in Languages and TESOL Education at the Faculty of Education, Monash University. He has previously held leadership positions at Deakin University and Australian Catholic University.
Kostogriz’s research is based on sociocultural approaches to learning and teaching and centres on two overarching goals. The first is to understand the conditions by which students’ involvement in various classroom practices is shaped, and how such involvement affects both what is learned and how it is learned. The second is to use this understanding to help create effective classroom communities of learners and inform teaching practices.
Kostogriz’s current research projects focus on the professional practice and ethics of language teachers, teacher education and experiences of beginning teachers.
Keynote Abstract
Transcultural Literacy: Connecting languages and cultures in EAL education
More than ever in human history, we live and work in times of the large-scale mobility and migration of people across the boundaries of nation-states. While the world is undergoing significant cultural and linguistic reconfigurations, education systems in nation-states continue to grapple with language and literacy as one of their priorities in preparing young people for life in multicultural conditions. This project is complex in so far as it demands, ideally, a convergence of the dominant language and literacy education and the everyday cultural and linguistic practices of diverse students.
There are many positive signs of this convergence that are visible in the curriculum politics of Australia and in school communities that put emphasis on the development of intercultural understanding and the ethical and social capabilities of students. EAL education has been at the forefront of this work, bridging mainstream education and the diversity of students’ cultural and linguistic practices. However, the challenges in building egalitarian approaches to language(s) and literacy education persist.
This presentation explores the current conditions of the EAL teachers’ work in the era of increased accountability for quality teaching, highlighting the detrimental, and often unintended, effects of standards-based reforms on the capacity of schools to recognise linguistic and cultural diversity as a resource for learning. Drawing on research into the literacy practices of young people in a diasporic community in Melbourne, the paper offers a conception of transcultural literacy that arises from ‘new geographies’ of student identity characterised by experiences of cultural and linguistic border-crossing. Transcultural literacy is a phenomenon of the contact zone which refers to the space where languages and cultures meet, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power.
Recognising the utility of transcultural literacy for schooling in Australia, the paper concludes with some practical implications for EAL teaching that are framed as a “pedagogy of Thirdspace” – pedagogy that can enable students to understand and negotiate differences, their connectedness and meaning dynamics in a dialogue of recognised differences, on the cultural and linguistic crossroads.
More detailed keynote abstracts, individual session details and all presenter biographies are available by clicking here.