Lan Yu SID: 19497192

This essay argues that the Australian secondary education fails to facilitate the

inclusivity and equality in schooling for LBOTE students as these students and their

communities are still positioned outside of the public discussion over the language

issue. First, this essay will identify the language issue and discuss its various impacts

on students. It will employ the critical theory, mainly public sphere theory from

Habermas (1989) and Fraser (1990), to explain how the voice of LBOTE students and

their communities is excluded from the debate over education policies. Furthermore,

this essay will showcase the failure of current policies to provide more access for

LBOTE students and their communities to participate in the public discussion over

the educational system. What's more, this essay will look into how teaching practices

are affected in the context of GWS.

At first glance, the language issue may be simply interpreted as a lack of language

skills in LBOTE students. However, the essence of this issue can further conflict

between multicultural society and monoculturalism oriented educational contexts, if

the integral role of language in circumscribing a particular community (Schieffelin,

Woolard& Kroskrity, 1998) is taken into considerations. Given the circumstance, the

inequity of assessments towards LBOTE students has already been widely

recognised, especially in the case of The National Assessment Program – Literacy and

Numeracy (NAPLAN). According to Macqueen et al. (2018), Indigenous students from

remote communities are found much less engaged in the NAPLAN tests due to the

lack of background knowledge primarily composed of western culture and language,

which may partly explain the underperformance of Indigenous students from remote
Lan Yu SID: 19497192

communities. Given the variety of language ability and culture background, the

educational authority fails to tailor the contents of exams in order to evaluate these

disadvantaged students fairly.

Furthermore, the dominant role of ASE leads to the other significant issue that

LBOTE students always confront, which is the consistent struggle over their own

identity. The hegemony of AES is legitimated as too often ASE is emphasised by

policies as universal and normative in schooling (Cross, 2011). Consequently, such

promotive discourse on ASE marginalises the minor languages and their speakers as

some of them are unable to obtain the "basic" language skill (Cross, 2009). Students

with LBOTE are found isolated by their classmates since their community language

and culture are not equally valued as ASE (Cruickshank, 2014). In response to

isolation, some LBOTE students assimilate into the Australian culture by abandoning

their original identity. In the study conducted by Jones-Diaz (2015), a few LBOTE

students show reluctant to speak their community language, and some even lose

these languages.

The issues confronted by LBOTE students can be explained by the critical theory,

mainly the public sphere theory raised by Habermas. According to Habermas (1989),

the concept of public sphere refers to an abstract area existing in social life where

people can freely voice their concerns and define societal issues, which will further

influence political agenda and future policy. The public sphere in education can be

observed from a macro to a micro dimension. The media has documented the
Lan Yu SID: 19497192

debates over a subject namely Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the

Queensland secondary school curriculum, and the coverage illustrates the impact of

the public discourse on the process of policy making (Thomas, 2002). On the other

hand, a class can function as a micro public sphere, where students identify and

discuss issues to form a representative opinion, which may impact the future

pedagogies and educational contents by communicating with teachers and

administrators. Thus, the public sphere theory can provide a perspective of

communication to depict the silence of LBOTE communities in the process of forming

and implementing the supportive policies and strategies.

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