School of Language and Culture

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/554
The study of language, society and culture is at the core of the broad spectrum of knowledge known as the humanities. AUT's School of Language and Culture focuses on language in its widest sense — creative writing, English and its relationship with new media, translation and interpreting, international studies and the importance of intercultural competencies, discourse analysis and language teaching.

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Browsing School of Language and Culture by Author "Harvey, S"

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    Foreign Language Teachers’ Language Proficiency and Their Language Teaching Practice
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Richards, H; Conway, C; Roskvist, A; Harvey, S
    Teachers’ subject knowledge is recognised as an essential component of effective teaching. In the foreign language context, teachers’ subject knowledge includes language proficiency. In New Zealand high schools, foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish) have recently been offered to learners earlier in their schooling, prompting a demand for more foreign language teachers. A nationwide professional development programme for language teachers is building language teacher capacity to meet the demand. Participants on the programme have a range of language teaching subject knowledge. While some have extensive knowledge of their target teaching language but lack formal language teaching qualifications, others are generalist teachers with an interest in teaching a foreign language who are just beginning to develop their subject knowledge. This paper considers teachers’ subject knowledge, that is, their language proficiency. We report on the differences in the classroom practice of teachers with limited subject knowledge, compared with teachers with more extensive subject knowledge. The data were analysed against key aspects of teaching based on the work of Farrell and Richards. The analysis revealed a variance in the number of key aspects the teachers could manage and differences in their level of effectiveness in managing the key aspects. We highlight the importance for teachers with limited levels of target language proficiency of continuing to develop their subject knowledge in order to maximise the language-learning experience for their students.
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    'French adds to its owner’s culture and general intelligence’. The politics of subject languages in New Zealand schools: the first fifty years
    (University College London, 2015-09-17) Harvey, S
    In publicly monolingual, English dominant countries like New Zealand, why, how, when, where, which and for whom subject languages are taught in schools, are important questions. Unfortunately these questions rarely receive the breadth of engagement and discussion they deserve. They have become even more salient as New Zealand and like jurisdictions experience unprecedented levels of linguistic and cultural diversity due to migration. In addition globalisation has meant a greater need for citizens of all nations to be able to interact sensitively and productively with people from cultures that are quite different from their own. Learning additional languages (including indigenous languages) can be a key vehicle for promoting plurilingualism and intercultural competency in young people who will need these expanded communicative repertoires at home and abroad, in the future. New Zealand, however, has been slow to embrace the wider debates and demands of quality teaching of subject languages in schools. In order to better understand the situation this paper presents a Foucauldian ‘tracing back’ to examine why things are the way they are and to think about how they might be different. The research is part of a wider historical language policy project investigating the constitution of subject languages in schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Here, I draw on early New Zealand governmental and departmental policy records to examine how subject languages were discursively constructed in the fifty years after the Education Act of 1877 and what the key policy drivers were. Policy frames of colonisation, migration, indigeneity, class and geopolitics will be taken into account in the analysis. It is hoped that in describing the discursive construction of subject languages over time it will be possible to understand how contingent and open to change current policies and practices are.
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    Language Policy and Planning
    (The Auckland Languages Strategy working group, 2015-11-27) Harvey, S
    No abstract.
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    A Languages Strategy for Auckland: Why and What Are The Issues?
    (Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, 2015-11-25) Harvey, S; Warren, S
    No abstract.
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    Pacific Languages, Neoliberalism and Language Education Policy
    (Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, 2015-11-24) Harvey, S
    Since 1984 and the election of a fourth Labour Government, New Zealand has been characterised as one of the most neoliberal countries in the world. Neoliberal theory frames most policy, including educational language policy. In this paper I report on the effects of neoliberalism on Pacific languages in schools, focussing on several policy positions the current National-led government has taken over the last three years. These include the Inquiry into Pacific Languages in Early Childhood Education, the Pacific Education Plan and the Pacific Languages Strategy. These policies present community language maintenance and language decline and even extinction as private matters to be dealt with at individual, family and community levels, rather than as issues that should be explicitly addressed and supported within the education system. The paper examines Pacific languages in New Zealand in their historical context and problematises the government’s privatised and individualised approach to Indigenous languages of the Pacific.
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    Teacher Provision of Opportunities for Learners to Develop Language Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010) Conway, C; Richards, H; Harvey, S; Roskvist, A
    This paper examines a language teacher education professional development programme in New Zealand that draws on the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum. At the heart of the Learning Languages area in the curriculum is communicative competence, with the understanding that communication involves language knowledge and cultural knowledge. The New Zealand Ministry of Education expects that schools will be able to offer all Years 7–10 students the opportunity to learn an additional language in order for them to participate effectively in multicultural settings, both in New Zealand and internationally. To deliver this, language teachers and generalist teachers are being encouraged to undertake professional development. This paper reports on a research evaluation of a Ministry-sponsored language teacher professional development programme. The findings reveal success in increasing teacher understanding of how to develop learners’ language knowledge, because this part of the programme was underpinned by a deep principled knowledge base, and teachers had opportunities to acquire knowledge and participate in a language teaching community. However, teacher understanding of how to increase learners’ cultural knowledge was less successful, because of a lack of a principled knowledge base of intercultural language teaching. We argue that effective professional development programmes need both to be based on deep principled knowledge and to offer learning that involves acquisition and participation.
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    Working Towards the Mainstreaming of Languages and Cultures in National Curricula: Norway and Aotearoa/New Zealand
    (Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, 2015-11-24) Harvey, S; Sollid, H; Olsen, T; Lourie, M
    In this symposium we bring together colleagues from Norway and Aotearoa/NZ to consider the place of languages and cultures within our respective national curricula. We will examine what still needs to be achieved in each system to weave our diverse languages and cultures into the curriculum mainstream. Although geographically very far apart, our two countries share a similar population size as well as specific features which make comparative analyses in languages education potentially productive. These features are: Indigenous populations whose languages and cultures have been marginalised in our national education systems; relatively large migrant populations whose languages are attended to with different levels of success in each country; and dominant languages, proficiency in which acts as a litmus test for how well people are regarded in society, what jobs they can consider and what services they have access to. While the place of English is different, it nevertheless raises issues of dominance, power and language displacement in each country. Moreover, as both countries integrate further with their respective adjacent regional economic powerhouses, Norway with Europe and New Zealand with the Asia Pacific region, strong plurilingualism and intercultural competency will be vital qualities for those currently in the education system. In our symposium we look comprehensively at what will be required to coherently and ethically engage with, and address, Indigeneity and diversity in our education curricula. We will examine the place of the Sami language and culture in Norway, and we will consider how Te Reo Maori and Pacific languages have fared in the New Zealand curriculum. Finally, policy initiatives will be suggested to structure the mainstreaming of intercultural and language education to promote an engaged, reflective and tolerant citizenship to prepare our young people for their future lives in diverse communities at home and abroad.
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