When I first joined an English bridging program as a teacher in Australia, I quickly learnt the unwritten rule: real learning happens in English. Even a stray browser tab showing Chinese text could raise eyebrows. I knew this because a coordinator reminded me that Chinese text should not appear in a classroom computer's browser history. I am Chinese-born and raised, and I felt like an imposter, as if my Chinese-ness was a liability that needed to be carefully managed.

Dr. Sue Ollerhead, Macquarie University Dr. Sue Ollerhead works with translanguaging as a researcher and teacher educator in Sydney. In this interview, she shares her insights with Marianne Turner on the feasibility and impact of translanguaging for students of different ages in Australian classrooms.      Marianne:  Sue, thank you for talking to me today, First, can I ask a general question about the way you work with the idea of translanguaging? What drew you to this idea o

As an advocate of bilingual education and a teacher in a bilingual primary school, I have seen many of the benefits and challenges for students, families and teachers alike.

As a teacher of Italian and a teacher educator, I have the privilege to work with students from many different cultural and linguistic

Differentiation is key to meeting teaching and learning objectives at school. Some students need extra help to reach required achievement standards, others are exceeding expectations and need to be extended, and still others need a different way of thinking about achievement standards altogether. English-as-an–additional-language (EAL) students in Australia are generally labelled as EAL because they are considered to need some kind of additional language support. It can be di

Born and raised in Vietnam, I learned and later taught English as a foreign language. My monolingual background significantly shaped my perspective, and I was particularly influenced by two key experiences during my learning and teaching journey. The first pivotal experience was being selected to attend a provincial high school where students were trained to become leaders in the province. At the welcoming ceremony, the head teacher, a renowned Russian language instructor, ad

Navigating language use in the classroom can be challenging.