Introduction

Given Australia’s geopolitical position and interest in China (Australia in the Asian Century Task Force, 2012), Chinese is discursively positioned as a ‘language of the future’ and worthy of study in schools (Weinmann et al. 2021). The drop-out rate of non-Chinese background school learners, however, is as high as 95% before Year 10 (Singh and Han, 2014), and the crux of limited sustained success in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) education rests on, amongst all other factors, the pedagogy employed by teachers (Orton, 2016). Scrimgeour (2014) reports that over 90% of Chinese teachers in Australia are native Chinese speakers and received tertiary education in Chinese institutions, and their pedagogic practices are dominated by a teacher-centred approach (Moloney and Xu, 2012, 2015), reflecting the commonality of the teaching approach to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and practices of teaching other languages in China.

While educational research shows an increasing uptake in invigorating CFL pedagogies that take the diversity of learners and Australian context into account (e.g. Orton and Cui, 2016; Singh and Han, 2014; Tasker, 2016), there remains a paucity of papers that peer deeper into the edifice of the changing manner of the language used by both teachers and students in classroom life. Thus, it is time to undertake classroom-based empirical studies into pedagogic discourse, as it appears that CFL teachers themselves are looking for a general principle that might scaffold them to chart classroom practices aligning with Australian education principles (Christie, 1995), thus providing students with engaging language learning experiences.

In this paper, therefore, I ask:

  • What do pedagogic discourses look like in the CFL classroom?

  • What type(s) of pedagogic discourses promote the engagement of CFL learners?

As a teacher-researcher, my time spent with underprivileged students and researching languages education pedagogies helped me glean some valuable insights about the dire need for research and the level of engagement at school (Xu, 2021). As such, the model of engaging classroom interactions developed in this article was based upon an interwoven process of trial and error, as well as referring to conceptual resources that will be further outlined in the theoretical frameworks section.

A lesson was consequently selected from the larger dataset and will be unpacked in the following paper, as it was well-received by students and represents the typical pattern of teaching (with shifting pedagogic discourse) in the CFL classroom, rather than a one-off case. Certainly, this specific lesson should not be trumpeted as an exemplary and established model that allows replication globally or determines how CFL education should evolve, as teaching is a human activity that cannot be standardised (Weinmann et al. 2021); rather, it signposts ways of pushing forward a successful implementation of Chinese programs in Australian education.

This paper begins by outlining CFL education in the Australian context, pinpointing its developments, flaws and challenges, which provides an entry point into why the connection between CFL education and pedagogic discourse should be investigated. The next section brings the core theoretical frameworks into focus: Bernstein’s instructional discourse and regulative discourse and Fair Go Project’s (FGP) engagement framework, which serve as the theoretical tool to analyse classroom talk and students’ learning experiences. In the methodology section, the research site, the participants, data collection and analysis are glimpsed, followed by featuring close attention to flows of pedagogic discourse in relation to students’ engagement at the micro level of classroom interactions. The discussion section unravels the complexities involved in pedagogic communication, while theorising varying pedagogic discourses on a continuum were likely to overcome students’ social backgrounds and offer them engaging CFL learning experiences. The paper concludes with implications for researching and conceptualising CFL in the Australian context, given the potential which this type of research is currently held to have for teaching and equity agenda (Cruickshank et al. 2020).

CFL education in Australia: the importance of context

The promotion of CFL education in Australia is bound to its national and geopolitical imaginaries, and classroom-based instruction is articulated as fostering multilingualism and educating future global citizens in the ‘Asian Century’ (Australia in the Asian Century Task Force, 2012). The rhetoric of Chinese as ‘a language for the future’ under Australia’s official language policies seems to align with the social inclusion agenda (Australia in the Asian Century Task Force, 2012; Lo Bianco, 2014), especially the initiative on pushing forward language education in schools serving low socio-economic status (SES) communities where the ‘back to basics’ curriculum approach is often prioritised (Cruickshank et al., 2020). Students with Chinese linguistic capital are considered as a competitive workforce in linguistically diverse societies, and they are likely to be more inclusive and participative in social interactions and encounters between people, groups and organisation (ACARA, 2011; Connell, 2012).

Though CFL education as a means for mediating social inclusion of the disadvantaged has received attention recently (Cruickshank et al., 2020), the teaching and learning of Chinese is a fragile undertaking across all stages of Australian schooling (Scrimgeour, 2014). The drop-out rate of non-Chinese background school learners is as high as 95% before Year 10, usually once the language is no longer mandated (Orton, 2016). The teacher-directed pedagogy failed to engage properly with the needs of school learners, and students who are keen to learn Chinese also complain that textbook-based, teacher-directed and decontextualised learning is boring (Prescott and Orton, 2012). In other words, CFL pedagogic practices clash with the Western constructivist education schema that supports collaboration, teamwork, inquiry, problem-solving and reflection (e.g. ACARA, 2011), and tensions of teaching ideologies occur in terms of ‘what’ to teach and ‘how’ to teach lead to high drop-out rates (Singh and Ballantyne, 2014).

What became the catalyst for this classroom-based, empirical research, however, is the paucity of general principles that can generate more specific and nuanced descriptions and understanding of the nature of knowledge and teacher-students relations embedded in CFL pedagogical communications. Diving persistently into pedagogic discourse informed, practice-oriented research provides novel and valuable insights into engaging CFL pedagogic practices and instigate dialogue that points to inclusive language ideologies that value diversity (Piller and Takahashi, 2011). Bernstein’s theory of the social reproduction of pedagogic discourse is useful to this study in particular, as it forms the fundamental analytic tool for representing, examining and evaluating how disaffection or disengagement from learning can stem from students’ negotiation of the ‘discourse of power’ in classroom interactions.

Theoretical frameworks

Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse

Basil Bernstein was particularly interested in converting knowledge into pedagogic communication and his paired concepts of classification (structure relations) and framing (interactional practices) well explains the ways in which different modalities of practices transmit knowledge and skills, but also construct particular identities for learners (Bourne, 2008; P. Singh, 2002). Whilst the strength of classification distinguishes the division of educational knowledge, framing refers to controls on communication in the pedagogic relationship between teachers and students within school settings (Xu, 2021). To be more specific, framing encompasses the natural of the control over:

  • the selection of the communication;

  • its sequencing (what comes first, what comes second);

  • its pacing (the rate of expected acquisition);

  • the criteria; and

  • the control over the social base which makes this transmission possible (Bernstein, 2000, pp. 12–13).

Both classification and framing have their variations in value (Xu, 2020); when the two continua of classification and framing, each with stronger or weaker strengths, are intersected (Exley et al. 2016), orientations to meaning for learners and specific social identities will be constructed (Bourne, 2008).

Framing regulates the pedagogic discourse which embeds two interrelated discourses: instructional discourse (ID) and regulative discourse (RD). ID refers to ‘the discourse which creates specialised skills and their relationship to each other’ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 32) as it relates to ‘the selection, sequencing, pacing and evaluation criteria of the knowledge to be acquired’ (Barrett, 2017, p. 1260); RD is ‘the moral discourse which creates order, relations and identity’ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 32) and it pertains to hierarchical relations and expectations of behaviour, conduct, manner. The two discourses are found intertwined in such a way that RD always dominates ID, and the strengths of framing vary over the elements of ID and RD (Bernstein, 1990). The development of this theorisation on pedagogic discourse is a ‘disciplined’ approach to constructing knowledge and inducting disadvantaged students into ‘ways of working valued in the wider culture’ (Christie, 1995, p. 241). This involves an access to ‘information, resources, and opportunities for participation’ in the classroom and beyond, which resonates with educational inclusion and equity reflective of this article’s significant aims.

However, students may possess recognition rules and discern the boundaries of knowledge, without constituting realisation rules and knowing how to legitimately construct pedagogic texts (Singh, 2002). An operation of specific pedagogic discourse at the micro level of the classroom via ‘interactional practices’, as continuous evaluation, may systematically generate a range of possible ‘approaches’ to scaffolding students to identify what is absent and what is present and contribute to legitimate texts production (Moore, 2013). Bourne (2008, p. 42) also describes pedagogic discourse as ‘marking the social relationship between teacher and pupil not only constructs knowledge and skills to be acquired, but also the specific social identities and orientations to meanings for learners’. As such, the pedagogic discourse embedded in the powerful classroom message systems has the possibility of transmitting discipline specific knowledge (competence), managing behaviour and (re)shaping individuals’ specialised consciousness (Christie, 1995), thus contributes to the formation of distinct identities for different categories of learners (Bourne, 2008).

The heuristic capacity of Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse has enabled various pedagogic modalities and research to be envisioned in the past decades, including the areas of English literacy, ESL, mathematics, science and social science (see, for example, Barrett, 2017; Cary and Johnston, 2000; Christie, 1999; Lammers, 2013; Williams, 2005). This reveals shifts in the manner of the discourse used by both teachers and students and the playing out of power relations on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ to teach at the micro level of classrooms. Resonating with Martin’s (2009) appeal for more relevant research into second language (L2) learning contexts, this paper aims to present a Bernstein informed study to better prepare teacher of Chinese to structure their everyday pedagogic activities and relations, which are at stake for inducting students into learning.

Fair Go Project’s engagement framework

The Fair Go Project (FGP) is an action research project with a specific focus on students from low SES backgrounds and their engagement in schooling. Drawing upon Bernstein’s (2000) hypothesis of students’ negotiation with classroom message systems (curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment)Footnote 1, the FGP team contends that classroom messages could be either engaging or disengaging, and the disengaging messages low SES students have historically received are generalised as the ‘discourses of power’ (Munns et al. 2008). The pedagogic discourse and its recurring results, as a form of control and effect of power, are negotiated by students and tend to shape their schooling experiences and the ways they see themselves as learners (Zammit, 2011). Teachers serving poor communities may need to consider a shift in both ID and RD in their approaches to teaching, thus reinforcing positive, engaging messages to students.

For the FGP, student engagement is understood as a balanced, multifaceted interplay of high cognitive, affective and operative learning experiences when students are ‘thinking hard, feeling good and working well’ (Munns et al., 2008, p. 160). This process contributes to interrupting the ‘discourses of power’ for students in low SES communities (Munns and Sawyer, 2013). A shift from disengaging to engaging messages appears to be associated with empowerment and equity, as students are more likely to be apprenticed into language and subject knowledge (Christie, 1995; Lo and Jeong, 2018), as well as to enhance their consciousness of perceiving Chinese as a ‘language for the future’ (Weinmann et al. 2020). Thus, this theoretical inspiration will be used to interpret students’ learning experiences narrated in focus groups.

Methodology

In this practitioner inquiry, I, as a Chinese native speaker and a teacher-researcher, taught at a government primary school situated in the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) area, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, from March 2017 to July 2019 (Xu, 2021). In this process, I taught Chinese language and culture lessons, observed and interviewed students, researched my pedagogic practices in order to improve engagement in CFL education. A brief socio-geographic description of the area is crucial to understandings of challenges, significance and implications of teaching Chinese in the local school. GWS is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with the largest immigrant population in Australia (Kamp et al. 2017). The mix of refugees, Indigenous Australians and migrants from every part of the world contributed to ‘a distinctive and super-diverse cultural profile’ of Western Sydney (Knijnik, 2018, p. 4). Of key importance to the current study is that 67% of students at the school were from non-English speaking backgrounds, and the largest non-English languages spoken at home were Tagalog (11.4%), Hindi (6.6%), Urdu (4.9%), Filipino (4.9%) and Arabic (2.7%). On the other hand, this vast area is far away from the city centre and well-known Sydney icons such as the Opera House. Transport and infrastructure disadvantage, social exclusion, violence, drug and alcohol problems also make up the region’s profile (Munns et al., 2008). The low SES has largely limited students’ ranges of activities and structured their lifeworlds – some of them had never travelled abroad and did not know there was a country called ‘China’. Watching TV and playing mobile phones were their primary pastimes during school holidays.

The three-year practitioner inquiry provided me with a rich range of empirical data at the micro level of the CFL classroom. Prior to this study, the participation information sheet and the parents/caregivers consent form were provided to students to obtain parents/caregivers signed consent. Before each student focus group interview, the classroom teacher recruited participants from those who verbally agreed to participate and had their parents/caregivers signed consent so as to ensure that the recruitment process allowed for free and voluntary consent. The audio recordings of lessons (n = 25) generated 25 transcripts of classroom talk across three school terms (Term 1, 2 and 3) in 2018, from a Year 5 class. During this period, I also collected students’ opinions about learning in four focus groups. Each focus group interview had four or five participants and last approximately 20 min. The conflation of these two data sources offered a multifaceted view of how students negotiated complex linguistic resources and constructed meanings through discursive practices (Christie, 1995).

Transcribing lesson audio recordings and focus groups was the initial engagement with the data, which assisted in identifying themes and noting emerging preliminary patterns, as well as led to more in-depth analytic work. According to the changes in either one or all ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings (Christie, 1999), lessons were segmented into four phases and each phase was given a descriptive name: Review ^ Introduction ^ Input ^ Constructivist activities (where ^ = followed by) (Please see more details in Xu, 2021). A transition to a new phase was realised in changes of ideational meanings with regards to the learning contents, interpersonal meanings indicating a shift in pedagogical relationships, and textual meanings referring to pedagogic modalities (Rose and Martin, 2012). Driven by Bernstein’s (2000) analytical lens of classification and framing (see Tables 1 and 2), the transcripts of audio recordings were deductively coded according to the strength of classification (C) and framing (F) (C+/C-/F+/F-), where ‘+’ refers to stronger strength and ‘−’ refers to weaker strength. The analysis of the students’ focus groups was guided by the preliminary codes developed from the FGP’s engagement framework, that is, cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement (Munns and Sawyer, 2013).

Table 1 Codebook 1.
Full size table
Table 2 Codebook 2.
Full size table

When codes from the two data sets were clustered and connected, themes were discovered (Xu and Zammit, 2020). In this paper, a particular lesson was chosen not only because it was well received and frequently brought by students in focus groups, but also it represents the pattern of pedagogic discourse throughout the transcripts thus pinpointing how to develop a more transformative CFL teaching practice that fits into the social inclusion agenda. The next findings section incorporates and interweaves quotes from different data sources, my interpretation, and prior research conceptually, to move beyond the illusion of being linear and static, making an argument in relation to the research question.

Unlocking pedagogic mazes

Pedagogic discourse in a lesson

In order to demonstrate the ways that analysis of pedagogic discourse illuminates the operation of ‘what’ and ‘how’ to teaching, the presented text involved a specific CFL lesson. This was segmented into four phases due to a shift in either one or all ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions (Christie, 1999): Review ^ Introduction ^ Input ^ Constructivist activities (where ^ = followed by) (Xu, 2021). Phasal shifts captured transitions in the language used by the teacher and students over time and understanding how students entered into the culture of common knowledge (Christie, 1995). In other words, a phasal shift displayed changes in language and learning activities, as well as classification and framing at the micro interactions.

While the Review phase refers to revisiting the previous week’s lesson, the Introduction phase was intended to provide students with basic information about the days’ lesson, which was then supported by the teacher-led learning in the Input phase. The Constructivist activities phase was characterised by a sequence of learning activities to offer students opportunities to strengthen their learning from the prior phases. Pedagogic discourses, that is, classification and framing will be further elaborated in the upcoming subsections.

Review phase

Teacher (T): OK, nǐ men hǎo, 5 S.

Students (S, as a whole class): nǐ hǎo, Ms XXX.

T: Last week, we’ve learned how to greet each other in Chinese. Please take out your worksheets in case you forgot them. If we’re saying ‘Hello’ to only one person, that’s…?

S: nǐ hǎo.

T: Good. If we’re saying ‘Hello’ to two or more, it should be …?

S: nǐ men hǎo.

T: Well done!

The pedagogic pathway, as instantiated, was associated with stronger classification and framing that formed the Review phase to guide students to revisit phrases of greetings in Chinese. ‘What’ to review was specified by the teacher, that is, greeting one person and more than one person, and this was clarified as last week’s learning. Though students were encouraged to refresh their memories as a whole class and their answers were affirmed, the pedagogical relationship was hierarchical; the controls on sequencing, pacing and criteria were rigidly exercised by the teacher (Ensor, 2004), since the power and authority were largely embedded in her assessment and classroom management. In addition, expectations about behaviour – ‘taking out your worksheets’ were made explicitly, which can also be considered as stronger framing over hierarchical rules (Morais, 2002), and students were instructed to be ‘conscientious, attentive, industrious’ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 13) in their efforts of learning. This episode, as well as the initial phases presented in the course, indicated strong rules of selecting and communicating knowledge in the opening of the lesson.

Introduction phase

T: OK. Today we’re gonna learn numbers from zero to ten. Let’s watch a clip first.

(Students were watching the clip)

T: OK. Do you wanna watch it again?

S: Yes!

T: Now I’ll play it again. While you’re watching, please try your best to remember as many as you can.

S: líng (zero), líng líng líng líng líng… yī (one), yī yī yī yī yī…

(Students were watching and learning to pronounce with the clip)

The introduction phase was characterised by a combination of stronger classification and framing and stronger classification and weaker framing. The teacher had more apparent control over the selection of knowledge – ‘numbers from zero to ten’. A clip was played first, however, students were observed to be engrossed in watching and the teacher suggested play it again. In other words, students had some control over pacing – the time of their acquisition, of which Bernstein argued that successful learning depends on (Morais, 2002). As the video was utlised to teach, the strength of framing was weakened in terms of the hierarchical relations. It is obvious that students became to have greater autonomy and flexibility over learning – they can either sit there and watch, or learn to pronounce with the video. The teacher’s step-back positioned her out of view to overlook the group of students. The hierarchical space was re-designed, and the control over ‘how’ to learn was handed over to students. Their spontaneous shadowing appeared to be the internalisation of the expectation and criteria from the teacher, which can be viewed as a sign of successful teaching (Jardine, 2005).

Input phase

T: OK. Now, guys, look at your worksheet or smartboard, and read these numbers after me. For zero, that’s ling, it’s like ‘lynn’. OK, read after me, líng.

S: ling.

T: Pay attention to the second tone, please. Our pitch rises, just like asking a question. Read it again, líng.

S: líng.

In the Input phase, the strengths of classification and framing were consistently strong. The instructional field – the content to be dealt with – was well-defined, and it focused on numbers in Chinese. This involved the development of skills, e.g. the pronunciation of zero and its tone, on the part of students and the assistance of the teacher. The framing related to the overall goals of the learning and to the sequencing, criteria of learning built direction of behaviour and habits (e.g. ‘look at your worksheet’, ‘read these numbers after me’, ‘read it again’), constructing as a sense of the routines, of what the teacher and students would do together. Here, students internalised the explicit evaluation criteria as they produced the legitimate text (Morais, 2002), which was eventually realised in particular in their correct pronunciation, zero (líng). The framing was explicit and distinguishable from the classification, as a means of maintaining order and controlling the learning. The pedagogic relationship appeared to be asymmetrical and ritualised with students having less power, since the teacher was dominant in the formation of intended learning and students followed closely the language and steps constrained by the teacher’s practice (Daniels and Tse, 2020).

Constructivist activities phase

T: Now we have five arithmetic questions on the smartboard. Please try to add and subtract according to instructions and tell me the answer in Chinese. I’ll give those who answer and pronounce correctly a sticker. Anyone wanna have a go?

S3: Ms, can I try?

T: Sure. Can you tell us the answer to the first question?

S3: sān. Is that correct?

(Students all nodding)

T: Good job. Can you choose a person to answer the next question?

S3: Austin (pseudonym).

S4: loo.

T: Is he correct?

S: No no.

S5: I’ll say liu.

T: OK, everyone, for six, it’s like ‘lieu’. Read after me again, liù, pay attention to the fourth tone, liù.

S: liù.

By observing a variety of lessons at the school, the teacher was inspired to ‘de-locate’ and ‘relocate’ the discourses from the mathematics lesson, for the purpose of giving students’ voices and improving their engagement in CFL learning, which weakened the strength of classification. Though addition and subtraction were within the Year 2 and 3 mathematics curriculum, it appeared to be appropriate for Year 5 students to integrate their prior knowledge in Chinese language practices. The weaker classification allowed students to be a part of the instructional practices and experience the boundaries between Chinese and another school subject (mathematics), thus being exposed to a wider world and enhancing themselves intellectually (Connell, 2012).

The weaker classification led to the weaker framing (Bernstein, 2000), as students seemed to be more active in dialogic practices (Daniels and Tse, 2020) and their prior mathematics knowledge was legitimised and recognised within the learning and assessment context (McPhail, 2016); they evaluated and corrected their peers, and nominated the person for the next turn and consequently, the pedagogic rights (i.e. enhancement, inclusion and participation) proposed by Bernstein (2000) were institutionalised. It appears that students have been successfully initiated into the language, CFL subject knowledge and classroom culture; the framing was no longer foregrounded in the classroom interactions, since students began to take more independent control over learning, either behaviour management or knowledge acquisition, which was a significant measure of the successful adjustment of the pedagogic discourse (Christie, 1995). The weaker framing led the classroom talk to be more inclusive and participatory, and the students were encouraged to discuss and share ideas through interactions with other students and the teacher in the ‘dialogic space’ (Hennessy et al. 2020; Morais, 2002).

Students’ engaging learning experiences

Facilitated by the FGP’s engagement framework, this subsection further explores how students were re/shaped by the pedagogic discourse, as they became involved and committed (highly operative engagement), emotionally attuned (highly affective engagement), and had intellectually challenging learning experiences (highly cognitive engagement) (Fair Go Team, 2006).

A central argument on the operative engagement of disadvantaged students is to be ‘in task’, instead of being just ‘on task’ and mechanically following teachers’ instructions (Haberman, 2010). This indicates passionate involvement and beneficial participation in high intellectual quality learning activities, which was evidenced in the students’ focus group:

That one, everyone wanna choose, cuz everyone wanted to get that sticker and choose the person to have a turn. (Carra, Indian & Punjabi)

Carra was recalling the learning activity of answering arithmetic questions in Chinese. ‘Everyone wanna choose’ illustrates how students became ‘emotionally attuned’ while completing the academic task, as well as paid attention, put in efforts to learn. Giving stickers was a means to legitimise accomplishment and affirm who was counted as knowledgeable in a particular context, and such interactions also enhanced student engagement as they came to think of themselves as successful learners. Due to the weakening of classification and framing, students deployed their prior knowledge of mathematics and transferred it into CFL learning, which called for high-order thinking and cognitive investment. They craved to be lucky enough to be chosen, instantiating their affective and operative learning experiences in an intellectually demanding classroom.

When students’ opinions about the learning activities featured by stronger classification and framing were canvassed, most of them acknowledged that enjoyment in learning lowered the level of difficulty and gave them a thrust to be more concentrated:

It is fun (reading after the teacher) and makes it easier to remember. (Daisy, Filipino)

Though there is a well-documented abundance of research support a more communicative approach in Australian language learning classrooms (e.g. Bao, 2020; Kennedy, 2020; Orton and Cui, 2016; Pasfield-Neofitou et al., 2016; Tasker, 2016), Maxcene claimed that reading after the teacher was ‘fun’ and contributed to her retention. The ‘discourses of power’ appeared to not have been disrupted, as the teacher-directed and students followed and responded rigidly without negotiation. Probably it is because such pedagogic practices were not students’ everyday classroom experience, and the stronger classification and framing thus challenged normative practices, moved outside their ‘comfort zones’ (Zembylas and McGlynn, 2012). The pedagogy of discomfort (Zembylas, 2014), however, can be comforting from time to time and create new ways of being in the world, as students were allowed to engage in discursive practices that expanded their personal comfort boundaries, while creating spaces for affective and cognitive engagement.

Discussion

Different pedagogic discourses are like mazes (Moore, 2013). This paper explored how the teacher guided students through these mazes by unpacking the classification and framing interwoven in a CFL lesson, and how specialised learning experiences were rendered in response to the evolvement of pedagogic communication (Singh, 2013). An analysis of classroom talk suggests a generative structure to engage students within a specific CFL pedagogic context: that is, a combination of stronger classification and framing, stronger classification and weaker framing, and weaker classification and weaker framing. Changes in the strength of classification and framing may provide low SES students with opportunities to become more engaged in learning and with learning. Bernstein’s conceptual tool allows us to see the dynamic production and reproduction of pedagogic discourse, which provides insights into theorising ‘the organising principles of discursive practices’ (McPhail, 2016, p. 1150), as well as describing how possible thinking and feeling were shaped in the learning space (Daniels and Tse, 2020).

Mostly, classification was kept strong across the four phases, except for the Constructivist activities phase, since students at the school were non-Chinese background learners and neither English nor their heritage languages had intersections with the study of the Chinese language. Still, an attempt was made to weaken the strength of classification in the Constructivist activities phase, signalling a recontextualising process of selectively appropriating, relocating, refocusing and relating mathematics discourses to constitute new CFL pedagogic discourse. The boundary of knowledge was therefore blurred for creating epistemic pathways and connections, which has the potential to make the learning more meaningful, understandable and applicable (Frandji and Vitale, 2015; Morais, 2002).

The strength of framing was varying on a continuum across the lesson, ranging from stronger, to weaker, then to stronger and back to weaker, contingent on the phase and content. Specifically, framing was weaker in the Introduction phase, allowing students to have a general understanding of what was going to be taught in the day’s lesson. This became stronger in the following phase as the teacher had explicit control over the selection, pacing, sequencing and behaviour management, focusing on the transmission of knowledge. Therefore, in the Input phase, both classification and framing were foregrounded, as students moved between considerations of what to learn and how to learn (Christie, 1995). In the Constructivist activity phase, framing acted back of the weaker framing and it was no longer realised in pedagogic discourse as the teacher-students, students-students had more dialogic interactions in the class (Hennessy et al., 2020).

The results demonstrate the possibilities of shifts in pedagogic discourse to engage disadvantaged students in Chinese learning. Students’ active participation in a range of language practices and social relationships entailed the acquisition of CFL knowledge. In addition to being operatively engaged in learning activities, following instructions, and reading after the teacher, students displayed affective engagement by expecting to be chosen and to choose others. ‘Fun’ became a critical descriptor frequently appearing in students’ narratives of their CFL learning experiences. Morais and Neves (2001) claim that a relaxed framing over hierarchical rules enhances students’ enjoyment, whereas it can be argued from this research study that shifting the strength of framing over the pedagogic relations reinforced the emotional interactions between the teacher and students and refreshed their feelings about schooling. Cognitively, students counteracted the label of ‘risk-avoidance’ prevailing in poor community classrooms (Haberman, 2010; Munns, 2007), as students, for example, Carr state that ‘everyone wanna choose, cuz everyone wanted to get that sticker and choose the person to have a turn’. They put a large amount of effort in developing a deeper understanding of Chinese, spontaneously related CFL knowledge to mathematics (Lingard et al. 2003), rather than favouring ‘repetitive, non-challenging and educationally debilitating work’ (Zammit, 2011, p. 206). Thus the stereotype of low-level tasks, such as counting to ten (Orton, 2016), in the primary schools’ Chinese programs was subverted.

Linguistic and cultural capital, existing in embodied, institutional and objectified forms (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), are likely to be accumulated, provided students can be further offered opportunities to engage in CFL learning. Eventually, their linguistic and cultural capital, available to the ‘habitus’ in a particular field, are likely to be transferrable to other forms of capital (Park, 2011), be it economic and/or social, accumulating to symbolic capital to produce profits and bring advancement in their life chances in the Australian neoliberal market (Carrington and Luke, 1997). In this sense, a missing link between CFL education and social inclusion has been addressed – low SES students are more likely to ensure upward social mobility and deploy Chinese as a resource to gain access to better professional and educational opportunities in the future.

Concluding thoughts

This paper embarked on investigating the pedagogic discourse and learning experiences of a group of low SES background students in an Australian primary school CFL learning classroom. It took up the critique of teacher-directed pedagogy in CFL education and the advocacy of engaging pedagogy for disadvantaged students. In doing so, I have pointed out the conundrum of language use (classification and framing) in classroom talk that might scaffold pre-service teachers and practitioners to chart their lessons aligning with Australian education principles. The shifting pedagogic discourses manifested in four phases appeared to provoke intense interplay of high operative, high affective and high cognitive learning experiences. The work extends the FGP’s framework further to CFL education and dialectically unfolds a structured way (shifting pedagogic discourse) to engage disadvantaged students. From a pedagogical and teacher education perspective, more attention could be paid to how to better support teachers of Chinese, especially those from Mainland China or with a Chinese background, to recognise the value of language use and be prepared to implement more flexible pedagogical practices in classroom teaching.

This research has implications for the development of ‘Asia literacy’ which has been a key curriculum in Australian education policy and schools for the last five decades. The shifting pedagogic discourse as an engaging approach can be applied to other (Asian) languages teaching (e.g. Indonesian, Korean and Japanese), so as to write linguistic diversity into the social inclusion agenda in the age of hyper-diversity (Piller and Takahashi, 2011). Here the ‘social inclusion’ means to be more participative in the Asia literacy curriculum, experience boundaries of knowledge, and enhance intellectually (Connell, 2012). Considering the current high dropout rate that has been well documented by academic literature and policy documents, this elite associated language(s) education that has little bearing on the immediate lifeworld of disadvantaged students, as we see, appears to offer something (Xu, 2021).

Results of this research study holds possibilities of impacting teaching in the CFL field pertaining to pedagogic practices and student engagement. The concept and analysis of pedagogic discourse presented has the potential of apprenticing novice or Chinese background CFL teachers into structuring curriculum and pedagogy and charting lessons in the Australian school context. A nuanced understanding of engaging pedagogic discourse and inclusive, equitable pedagogy could, more or less, make a difference to the current landscape of CFL education in the Australian school context, thus facilitating the apprenticeship of students into the CFL curriculum and improving retention rates.