The Development of Successful Bilingual, Biliterate and Bicultural Pedagogy: Place for Tiwi Teachers and Tiwi Language in Learning

Abstract

This chapter details the development of a pedagogy for teaching literacy in two languages at Murrupurtiyanuwu Catholic School, and the adoption of that approach elsewhere. The process was informed by the emerging research and practice literature on bilingualism and the teaching and learning of English as a second language in the 1980s. The chapter also explores the shift from two parallel teaching programs to a more unified bilingual-bicultural teaching one implemented through the ‘Walking Talking Texts’ methodology for literacy and general curriculum delivery in both languages.