Embedding First Nations Perspectives in Languages Education

In the context of Australian multilingual education, Aboriginal languages and cultures have long been marginalised in secondary school classrooms, limiting students’ understanding of cultural diversity and identity. This workshop focuses on how Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) and Cultural Juxtaposition (CJ) can be combined to integrate Aboriginal perspectives into Chinese language education, thereby achieving the goal of cultural integration. By juxtaposing simplified Chinese myths (e.g., Pangu opens the world) with Aboriginal Dreamtime stories (e.g., Rainbow Serpent), students acquire language through picture prompts, sentence frames, and story retelling, while multimodal activities such as drawing, discussion, and audio recording foster deeper engagement with cultural meanings. Findings indicate that TPRS reduces language anxiety and improves students’ fluency, while CJ enables learners to compare and reflect on diverse worldviews of land, cosmology, and creation, strengthening intercultural competence and respect for Indigenous perspectives. Nevertheless, challenges remain, including risks of cultural appropriation, insufficient teacher training in cultural sensitivity, and the demands of differentiated instruction. Overall, the study argues that the integration of TPRS and CJ can transform the Chinese classroom into a shared space of language learning and cultural integration, contributing to decolonising pedagogy and advancing intercultural understanding.