Editorial.
Absalom, Matthew
This double issue of Babel brings together eight papers which deal
with a range of recurring issues for languages educators. The final five
papers, including Professor Joe Lo Bianco's Keith Horwood Memorial
address, were presented at the AFMLTA 17th Biennial
Conference--Dialogue, Discourse, Diversity--held in Sydney in July 2009.
All eight papers highlight ongoing themes for the field of languages
education: the challenge of the teaching enterprise, the place of the
student in language education, the development of the intercultural, the
protection of languages and languages education, and the identity of the
language teacher. For me, a silver thread weaving these accounts of
practice and thought together is the concept of movement. Morgan
describes a fascinating journal of intercultural discovery with the very
young that nicely complements the case for translating and interpreting
as activities at university which imply constant commuting between two
languages and cultures put forward by Takimoto and Hashimoto. Morgan and
Mercurio take us on a shopping spree of intercultural exploration from
Indonesia to Italy and back to Australia again. The notion of movement
is picked up by Hasegawa in his description of the Japanese assistant
teacher program in Western Australia while Rossetto and Chiera-Macchia
detail the transition from visual learning to other channels.
Daly's contribution on primary languages teaching takes us across
the Tasman where she describes changes in curriculum which lead to
identity shifts as teachers grapple with what it means to be a teacher
of languages in a primary school in New Zealand. Stracke and her
collaborators also look at structural issues in their assessment of
whether a commissioned report into languages teacher education has
caused any movement at all--the real issue turning out to be a
definitional one about what type of movement was called for in the first
place. Finally, Joe Lo Bianco, in inimitable style, grabs us by the
scruff of the neck and takes us on a whirlwind ride through time and
space to bring us right back to where we all want to be:
Unlike other 'subjects' on the school
curriculum languages are social
activities, practices in lived contexts in
which important consequences arise
and which are inhabited by learners.
We need to build in structured and
authentic usage as part of a seriously
intentioned approach to formal
language learning in schools.
As this double issue completes Volume 45 for 2010, I want to
acknowledge my contributors for their patience as I've wrestled
with a series of obstacles both personally (the sad passing of my
father-in-law) and technologically (a very untimely hardware crash). I
would also heartily thank those reviewers who continue to support Babel.
I thank, also, Dr Robyn Moloney, the Academic Chair of the AFMLTA 2009
conference, for her assistance with editing the four papers from that
conference.
On a sombre note, this double issue contains contributions on New
Zealand and Japanese and I would like to take a moment to consider the
tragic natural disasters that have devastated New Zealand and Japan--our
hearts go out to those affected.
I'm looking forward to 2011 being the year that Babel returns
to a regular production schedule so please keep an eye on your mailbox
for issue 46(1)...
Buena lettura!
Matthew Absalom
The University of Melbourne
