AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In a 1966 edition of English in Australia Tony Delves considered the purposes and goals of teaching English in his article ‘English as She is Not Taught’. Delves identified a number of key debates and ideas around the teaching of English that feel, even to the teacher or academic revisiting them in 2018, surprisingly contemporary: the role of grammar, language versus literature, student experience, creative writing, personal response, and teacher and student knowledge (Delves, 1966). Delves’ piece speaks to ongoing debates around the nature and content of subject English, where English is at once imbued with huge breadth and scope, responsible for not only literacy but also the moral and ethical education of students (Patterson, 2000), but at the same time, seen as having ‘no content’ (Dixon, 1975) and lacking a tangible body of knowledge (Doecke et al., 2018). We might then ask, as many before have – what is subject English? Peter Medway calls the need to define the subject as ‘an itch some of us can’t stop scratching’ (2005, p. 19).' (Editorial introduction)
Notes
-
Includes reviews:
Lyla, by Fleur Beale (2018)
Angel, by Zoe Daniels (2018)
Hive, by A J Betts (2018)
In the Dark Spaces, by Cally Black (2017)
The Drover's Wives, by Ryan O'Neill (2018)
Boy Swallows Universe, by Trent Dalton (2018)
And international works.
Contents
-
Should We Ban Books in Schools? Arguments from the Public History of Australian School Text Censorship,
single work
criticism
(p. 23-36)
'The sensitive question of whether censorship is permissible in the classroom has not been effectively explored, nor has there been an exhaustive survey of all occurrences of public censorship in schools. Through tracking all public occurrences, this article seeks to understand whether censorship is ever justified in both the English classroom and the school beyond. The language surrounding occurrences revealed three different social discourses about the agency of the child: purity and danger, the pedagogy of the oppressed, and liberal consensus. Whether text censorship is justified is ultimately a nuanced ethical issue concerning what constitutes the good society and the free agency of its children. From a social utilitarian position, I conclude that the liberal consensus model is most constructive for the Australian social contract, and argue for a rare case for censorship when a consensus model is undermined.' (Publication abstract)
-
Are You the Writer? : Literary and Cultural Influences on Writer Identity Uptake within Subject English,
single work
criticism
(p. 64-72)
'This paper investigates the notion of English teachers as writers, focusing specifically on the identity of the writer as they move from literary, philosophical and broader cultural spheres, and how this is understood within the context of secondary English education. The implications of what this identity, of these identities, mean for how teachers position themselves as writers in the classroom are discussed, as well as how this then affects understandings of the nature and value of subject English. The data for this paper are drawn from a research project that utilised a case study methodology of fifteen teacher-writers and data collection comprised a series of semi-structured interviews analysed through Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. The data reveal that English teachers' views of writing indicate a complex interaction with broader popular and cultural tropes of the writer.' (Publication abstract)
