Doing enactment within the logics of policy privatisation: how inclusion policy can be interpreted and translated for English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) students

Abstract

The logics of policy privatisation in schooling, including decentralisation, school autonomy, and discretionary funding mechanisms, shift responsibility for particular types of students onto individual schools and their staff. Burch (2021) asks to what extent the most disadvantaged students in government schools are able to access services most beneficial to them, under these emerging forms of privatisation. With this question in mind, this paper considers the delivery of English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) services under the umbrella of the Queensland Department of Education Inclusion policy, in two Queensland government secondary schools. We tease out how the Inclusive Education (IE) policy, of which EAL/D is a subset, is interpreted and translated (Ball et al. 2012) in the situation of privatisation practices. We found that inclusion was understood as primarily targeted at students with disabilities, and that mainstreaming of all learners was considered unsustainable for teachers. In interpreting and translating inclusion for EAL/D, both schools pushed back against the ‘mainstreaming’ discourse, and instead, EAL/D service was provided through targeted programs, staffed with key specialist personnel. In both cases, privatisation logics enabled the ‘EAL/D aware’ principals to justify and enact specialised EAL/D services. In this policy context, there is a need for widespread professional development to ensure all principals understand and apply appropriate supports for EAL/D learners.