O n f e r e n c e

Short paper 
As a result of colonisation and imposed fragmentation of their communities, there are 
few remaining speakers of the many Aboriginal
1
languages of the Kimberley region in 
Western Australia. In the case of Nyikina, it is reported that there were about 50 
speakers in 1981 (Stokes, 1982) and it is currently spoken by only about fifteen people 
1
The term ‘Aboriginal’ is preferred to ‘Indigenous’ by the First Australians of the Kimberley region. 
(Dwyer, 
2012) 

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2014 CALL Conference 
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of the grandparent generation and as such is classified as severely endangered 
(Endangered Languages, 2012). As a developer of CALL programs for commonly spoken 
languages (CSL), I was approached in 2009 by representatives of the remote Nyikina 
community to create a CALL program for their language (Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Nyikina lands (AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies), 2008) 
I am a white Anglo-European Australian and have been responsible for the commercial 
design and development of CALL programs for 20 years. I had had no contact with 
Aboriginal communities or their languages prior to this invitation, and my experience was 
largely based in English language programs. However, theoretically CALL was 
Eurocentric, and I needed to find out how CALL could respond to Indigenous languages 
(IL). In 2011, I embarked upon a study to investigate this issue (Figure 2). 
Nyikina 

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Fig. 2. Map of the broader study 
–
“How can CALL respond to Indigenous languages?”
In the current study, design-based research (DBR) as described by Collins et al (2004) 
was chosen as a research approach as it supports both Western and Indigenous situated 
methodologies. DBR is an approach, not a methodology, and was used in an 
unconventional fashion from a number of viewpoints. Firstly it was used as the 
method
for developing Design Principles for a process for the design and development of a CALL 
program. Secondly it was used to develop a 
process
rather than a construct, or 
intervention, although there was a CALL artefact produced as a result of the DBR. DBR is 
a participatory approach and calls for collaborative cycles of iteration through (sometimes 
concurrent) phases of exploration, development, implementation and reflection and 
results in a practical solution and theory, or Design Principles, which can be tested in 
replication of the research (Figure 3).
Fig. 3. Phases of design-based research (after Reeves, 2006, p. 59) 
DBR produces data that has to be gathered, recorded and analysed in a rigorous and 
valid fashion (Figure 4). Some of this data is consumed within the iterations of DBR, and 
some is available for analysis and interpretation in the wider study.

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Fig. 4. Phases of design-based research 
Many of the challenges in this study, their impacts on the course of the research and our 
responses, are summarised in the tables below. They are broadly methodological and 
epistemological and most of them are peculiar to the conduct of research by Westerners 
with Indigenous communities, but some relate to the choice of DBR as the research 
approach. In this paper, the data is organised following the four phases of the DBR 
cycle. Only the major challenges relating to CALL specifically are discussed in detail. 
1.
Collaborative analysis of a problem