Freeman, Leonard, Staley, Bea, and Wigglesworth, Gillian (2023) Assessment equity for remote multilingual Australian Aboriginal students through the lens of Sustainable Development Goals. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 25 (1). pp. 157-161.

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Abstract

Purpose. The Foundations of Early Literacy Assessment – Northern Territory (FELA-NT) was funded, developed, and implemented as part of a strategy designed to address the English literacy learning needs of the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal student population. In this paper we question whether the FELA-NT English literacy learning benchmarks are representative of remote and very remote Aboriginal students since many speak English as an Additional Language(EAL) or Dialect (EAD).

Result. Using a new data set of scores from 72 Aboriginal students from remote, very remote, and outer-regional com-munities on the FELA-NT, we demonstrate that it is the student’s experience with Standard Australian English, not their remoteness, that impacts their early literacy development.

Conclusion. We use this example to illustrate how current practices and policies homogenise the Australian Aboriginal student population, silencing linguistic diversity in the process. We call for clinical practitioners and educators to shift their practices to assessments and tools that recognise children and youths’ diverse linguistic skills and pathways. We talk about what empowerment, participation, and inclusion might really mean in current Australian educational and clinical con-texts. We argue here that we need to fundamentally rethink how we work with children with diverse language and literacy knowledge, skills, and backgrounds if we are to reduce inequalities (SDG 10), honour quality education (SDG 4), and support sustainable communities (SDG 11).

Item ID:	86494
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1754-9515
Keywords:	Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); quality education (SDG 4); reduced inequalities (SDG 10); sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11); assessment; Australian Aboriginal students; multilingualism
Copyright Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited:	07 Aug 2025 03:03
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3904 Specialist studies in education > 390402 Education assessment and evaluation @ 100%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1603 Teaching and curriculum > 160301 Assessment, development and evaluation of curriculum @ 100%
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