Mainstreaming of Italian in Australian schools: The paradox of success?

In Chapter 11, Yvette Slaughter and John Hajek examine the unintended outcome of the mainstreaming of migrant languages in schools by focusing on the path of Italian in the Australian education system. Although Australia is an English-dominant country, hundreds of languages are spoken in communities across the nation. The challenge for the Australian education system has been to cultivate the linguistic competence that already exists within Australian society, as well as fostering second language acquisition among all students (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2009). Australia’s Italian community has been particularly successful in achieving the widespread introduction of the Italian language as a subject within the nation’s primary and secondary education system. This chapter highlights some of the intricacies and effects of the relationship between language communities, maintenance and transmission, and the mainstreaming of languages in the school system. It points to a concomitant decline in the maintenance and development of bilingualism among Italian background speakers, and the disappointing performance of Italian in the upper years of secondary education. These trends, and the reasons for them, need to be carefully considered and addressed in order for Italian, and other community languages, to properly thrive through the entire school cycle in Australia. They clearly illustrate the need for ongoing advocacy and oversight for both the transmission of Italian as a second language in schools and as a community language