Methods
Qualitative research
Ethnography
Design Research
Participatory Research (Students/Teachers)
Visual methods
Thematic and content analysis
Research Focus
Language & literacies
Teaching Education
Multilingual, Multicultural Education
Concepts/Focus
Language acquisition & EAL/D
Culturally & linguistically sustaining pedagogies
Critical anthropological and sociological perspectives
Identity and equity
Dr Jacqueline D’warte is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University and a Senior Researcher in the Centre for Educational Research. Jacqueline has been a teacher in Australia, India and the United Kingdom and a teacher educator and lecturer in New York City and at the University of California Irvine and Los Angeles. Jacqueline’s research interests include language and literacy teaching and learning and the connections between language, identity, equity and learning in culturally and linguistically diverse educational settings. Jacqueline’s recent research includes engaging teachers and students as co-researchers and ethnographers of students’ language and literacy practices, this research is underpinned by a sustained research partnership with the NSW Department of Education and involves teachers as co-researchers. Most recent research includes, studies of multilingual pre-service teachers and professional learning for teaching and leadership in low SES schools.
Recent Projects
Exploring linguistic repertories (DoE)
This study conducted in partnership with the NSW Department of Education, includes four cycles of research (2013-2018) that involved teachers and students in classes from Years 1–8 in studying their own languages and literacies practices as part of their regular classroom learning. This research combined linguistic ethnography and design research and involved close to 1000 students and their teachers in classrooms in Western and South Western Sydney. School communities comprised between 76–99% of students from ‘Language Backgrounds Other English and between nine and seventeen languages were spoken by students in each classroom. A significant proportion of students were identified as ‘English as an Additional Language/Dialect learners. Data included Interviews and focus groups (students, teachers, parents, community), classroom observations, language maps (visual artefacts), lessons and activities, multimodal, multilingual, embodied, work and texts. Findings revealed increased teacher expectations of student capacities and an increase in the complexity of teacher assigned tasks. Findings also revealed an increase in student confidence and engagement and a willingness to share feelings about belonging and identity. Increased English achievement, metalinguistic awareness and understandings of register dimensions across classrooms were also evidenced. Teachers reported increased knowledge about students and how they learn, and how to build on home languages for learning using multimodal, multilingual tasks matched to across curriculum outcomes. Community and family engagement and active participation in classrooms increased along with enrolment in community language programs. Findings reveal that teachers do not need to speak the home languages of their students to work with, and build on students’ home language skills in service of learning. This research offers sustainable, pedagogical practices that can make a small but significant contribution to a more equitable education system that recognizes both the strengths and needs
Current Projects
Investigating Pre-Service Teachers’ Linguistic funds of Knowledge
Jacqueline D’warte and Dr Kathleen Rushton U Sydney
Rarely are the voices of education students heard, and in this study, our goal was to hear from multilingual pre-service teacher education students. This mixed method study of Pre-Service Teachers’ (PSTs) Linguistic ‘Funds of Knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992) was conducted in metropolitan Australian universities and funded by an Education grant from the Collier Charitable Foundation. This study explored PSTs’ views of their own linguistic knowledge and how participants’ saw their linguistic strengths, knowledge and experience translating into teaching. This study also considered the relationship between the university’s institutional practices and PSTs’ views. While COVID 19 pandemic, restricted access to participants across university sites, this study shows that Initial Teacher Education programs are failing to capitalise on the rich resources of PSTs. This research highlights the crucial and pressing need for new forms of applied knowledge on how educational sectors can actively capitalise on the multilingual capabilities of the Australian population.
An Investigation into the preparation of Pre-service Teachers for teaching in low SES contexts.
Jacqueline D’warte and Loshini Naidoo
In this study we are investigating how Western Sydney University, School of Education prepares Pre-Service Teachers for teaching in low SES contexts. We are examining the experiences of pre-service teachers during their Professional Experience teaching in low SES schools and exploring School Executives’ perceptions of quality teaching for low SES schools. We seek to understand the successes and challenges of working in SES contexts. This qualitative case study comprises semi-structured focus group and individual interviews 60mins duration with academic staff, pre-service teachers and school executives. This case study will triangulate different sources of evidence which come from interviews; as well as from different perspectives of those interviewees, thereby resulting in in-depth depiction (Yin, 2014, p. 48). Data analysis is currently in progress.
Youth in the Time of Coronavirus
Susanne Gannon, Jacqueline D’warte, Rachael Jacobs and Loshini Naidoo
This program of research involves an ongoing examination of the feelings, thoughts and experiences of young people aged 15-19 through periods of online learning in Australian schools during 2020, and 2021. The move to online learning challenged educators, families and students in a myriad of ways and privileging the voices and perspectives of young people seemed particularly important. As researchers concerned about educational justice and inclusion, we were inspired and guided by research led by Professor Dorte Marie Sondergaard Aarhus University Denmark. As our Danish colleagues noted, beyond conventional learning outcomes, the sociality and relationality of schooling are central to young people’s lives and their sense of belonging and becoming (Hansen, Knage, Rasmussen and Søndergaard, 2020). In this challenging time we were interested in considering how young people experience the shutting down of these domains of social life? What other modes of sociality have opened for them? What were their perspectives on online learning, on themselves as learners? Current Australian data comprises anonymous online surveys responses (or ‘written interview’) of open-ended questions from 2020 and 2021. 2020 interviews by Zoom with 8 individual students aged 14-15 and a collection of creative and reflective artefacts (31 writing, tasks) produced by young people under the guidance of their teachers within curriculum contexts. Analysis of this data and the collection of a further round of 2021 data is ongoing. We are currently undertaking a program of comparative analysis of all current data with our Danish colleagues and planning to co-author a series of publications. Current outputs from existing 2020 data include 2 manuscripts: ‘But w’rry not we shall banquet again someday: Creativity and socially distanced, English in Australia and Sociality, resilience and agency: How did young Australians experience online learning during Covid-19? Currently under review
Recent Publications
Books
Dutton, J., D’warte, J. Rossbridge, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Tell Me Your Story; Confirming identity and engaging writers in the middle years. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association 118.
Book Chapters
D’warte, J (2019) Exploring, thinking and learning about languages and literacies with young people in super-diverse Australian classrooms. In Inma Garcia-Sanchez and Marjorie Orellana. Language and Culture in Practices in communities and Schools, pp.213-230. US: Routledge
D’warte, J. (2019) Explorations of place and identity: Navigating local and global contexts in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. In Pauline Collins, Victor Igreja and Patrick Alan Danaher (Eds) Conflict, Place and Communication, pp.57-78. UK: Palgrave
D’warte, J. (2018). Creating space for a shared repertoire: re-imagining pedagogies to cultivate transcultural and translingual competencies, In S. Gannon, R, Hattam and W Sawyer, Resisting Educational Inequality: Reframing Policy and Practice in Schools Serving Vulnerable Communities, pp. 150- 65 Australia: Routledge 9781138089303.
D’warte, J. (2016). Students as linguistic ethnographers: Super-diversity in the classroom context. In D.R. Cole & C. Woodrow (Eds). Super Dimensions in Globalisation and Education, pp.19-35. UK: Springer.
D’warte, J. (2016). Reconceptualising Linguistic Repertoires: Applications for Writing. In L Tan & K Zammit (Eds.). Teaching Writing and Representing in the Primary School Years pp.121-140. Melbourne: Pearson
Arthur, L., & D’warte, J. (2016). Diverse Literacies and dialects. In E. Dau. (Eds). The Anti bias Approach in Early Childhood: pp. 81-98 Melbourne: Pearson
D’warte, J. (2015). Reflections on language and literacy: recognizing what young people know and can do. In T. Ferfolia, C. Jones Diaz & J. Ullman (Eds.), Understanding Sociological Theory and Pedagogical Practices pp.196–213. Australia: Cambridge University Press.
D’warte, J., & Somerville, M. (2014). Language mapping: Researching marginalized students’ everyday language and literacy practices. In S. Gannon & W. Sawyer (Eds). Contemporary issues of equity in education. pp.55-68. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Journal Articles
D’warte, J. & Y, Slaughter. (2021). Introduction: Reframing language in teaching and learning: Leveraging students’ meaning-making repertoires. Language Teaching Research 25(1),5-11: Special Issue: Reframing language in teaching and learning: Leveraging students’ meaning-making repertoires. Yvette Slaughter and Jacqueline D’warte
D’warte, J (2021). Facilitating agency and engagement: Visual methodologies and pedagogical interventions for working with culturally and linguistically diverse young people. Language Teaching Research 25(1),12-38
D’warte, J. (2020). Recognizing and leveraging the bilingual meaning making potential of young people aged 6-8 years old in one Australian classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 20 (2), 296-326 DOI: 10.1177/1468798418769361
Tan, L., Zammit, K., D’warte, J. & Gearside, A. (2020). Assessing multimodal literacies in practice: a critical review of its implementations in educational settings. Language and Education 34(2), 97-114
D’warte, J. (2019). Mapping languages and literacies with multilingual students in Australian classrooms. The Reading Teacher. Global Literacy Column 72(5), 662-669.
D’warte, J., Daniel, P., & Alan, A. (2018). Enhancing Learning through building on students’ and parents’ linguistic and cultural repertoires in Year 1 classrooms. Practically Primary, 23(1), 31-35.
Naidoo, L. & D’warte, J. (2017). The Western Sydney rustbelt: Recognizing and building on strengths in pre-service teacher education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 69-83.
D’warte, J. (2015). Building knowledge ‘about’ and ‘with’ students: Linguistic ethnography in two secondary school classrooms. English in Australia, 50(1), 39-48
D’warte, J. (2014). Exploring linguistic repertoires: Multiple language use and multimodal activity in five classrooms. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(1), 21-30.
D’warte, J. (2014), Linguistic repertoires: teachers and students explore their everyday language worlds, Language Arts, 91(5), 352 – 362
Somerville, M., & D’warte, J. (2014). Researching children’s linguistic repertoires in globalized classrooms. Knowledge Cultures: A Multidisciplinary Journal (2)4, 133-151.
OTHER PUBLICATION OUTPUTS
Research Reports
D’warte, J., Rushton, K., & Abu Bakar, A. (2021). Investigating Pre-service Teachers’ Linguistic Funds of Knowledge. Western Sydney University.
Website: https://linguisticfunds.edu.au/
D’warte, J. (2018). Research Report: Enhancing English Learning: Building on Linguistic and Cultural Repertoires in 3 School Settings NSW Department of Education and Training and Western Sydney University. ISBN 978-1-74108-479-5 doi: http://doi.org/10.26183/5ba9a85c6759b
Somerville, M., D’warte, J., & Sawyer, W. (2016). Building on children’s linguistic repertoires to enrich learning Western Sydney University. Retrieved from: https://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0009/1086831/LingReps_CER_site300516.pdf
Somerville, M. & D’warte, J (2015) Mapping students’ everyday multimodal language practices in a high needs school district. UWS, Penrith.
http://www.uws.edu.au/cer/research/research_reports
D’warte, J. (2013). Pilot Project Report: Reconceptualising English learners’ language and literacy skills, practices and experiences. UWS, Penrith.
http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/714391/Pilot_Project_Jacqueline_Dwarte.pdf
Curriculum Resources and Materials
AER RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Heugh, K., French, M., Armitage, J., Taylor Leech, K., Billinghurst, N., Ollerhead, S. (2019). British Council Handbook Using multilingual approaches moving from theory to practice. A resources book of strategies, activities and projects for the classroom. London: British Council. Language Mapping (p. 45, 131)
The Enquiring Classroom Handbook (2018) European Commission under the Erasmus Programme) D’warte Exercise 8 Mapping our Worlds (p164-169)
http://www.enquiring-project.eu/project-outputs.html
Chester Beatty Museum Dublin, Ireland: The Chester Beatty’s Learning and Education Development Program (2018). Creative Ireland and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. https://chesterbeattyeducation.wordpress.com/2018/11/
Building an intercultural programme for schools –new project 2018 –2020 Language Mapping Activities
NSW Government Education, Public Schools (2017) English as an Additional Language or Dialect. Planning Professional learning Jacqueline D’warte Professional Development Module: Students as Linguistic Ethnographers
https://connect.schools.nsw.edu.au/p2gm8mqlqmg (Seminar recording)
ESJI Research Group 