Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Othering or Inclusion? : Teacher Practice around Asian Voices and Identities in Literature
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

''Asia literacy' can be loosely defined as having 'some understanding of Asia and its languages in order to engage with it and communicate with its people' (Erebus Consulting Partners, 2002). The Australian Curriculum has prioritised children's development of Asia literacy, specifically through articulating the cross-curriculum priority defined as 'Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia'. In terms of the English curriculum, this priority is realised through an emphasis on the representation of Asian voices and characters in literature that is studied in the classroom. However, previous research undertaken in schools to explore the use of multicultural literature by teachers has demonstrated an uncritical approach to literature, with teachers tending to set up binary opposites of 'Australian' and 'the Other' (Leong and Woods, 2017; Mendoza and Reese, 2001; Rodriguez and Kim, 2018). This paper will present the complexities of practice with literature centred around countries from Asia as represented through research with five Tasmanian teachers - one early childhood teacher, three primary school teachers, and one secondary English teacher. It will examine the factors that influence teachers to use literature from Asian countries, their selection of literature, and their classroom practice with literature. Finally, it will make some recommendations for a stronger future whereby Asian peoples, voices and stories are integrated more inclusively and critically in teachers' everyday practice.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon English in Australia vol. 54 no. 3 2019 23609800 2019 periodical issue criticism 'We could hardly have imagined what the immediate 'Futures for English' would look like when we set out the call for papers for this Special Edition in 2019. As we write this Editorial, the world has been plunged into online and home-based schooling in response to the 'once in a century' COVID-19 pandemic: it is impossible, in the midst of this, to conceive what English, or indeed schooling will look like in the next months and years. English teachers at all stages of school and tertiary education have rapidly developed or expanded technological literate practices, as students encounter new approaches to the reading and production of texts in different forms and spaces. In Australia, this worldwide crisis follows an intense and unprecedented period of bushfire, where lives and livelihoods were lost, towns and national parks razed, smoke blanketed major cities, and dystopian accounts of destruction and survival dominated the media. We know that the stories that come from these unprecedented, life-changing local and global events will impact the nature of the texts we read and produce, and therefore the nature of subject English which has, since its inception, been responsive to changing contexts, discourses and social imperatives (McLean Davies, Doecke & Mead, 2013) (Editorial introduction)
     
    2019
    pg. 18-27
Last amended 20 Dec 2021 08:13:37
18-27 Othering or Inclusion? : Teacher Practice around Asian Voices and Identities in Literaturesmall AustLit logo English in Australia
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