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1 Teaching Small ‘l’ Literature : Lessons from English in Australia Brenton Doecke , Douglas McClenaghan , Lauren Petis , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 266-306)
'This essay is structured around quotations taken from early issues of English in Australia, the journal of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE), when that journal played a significant role in the formation of a professional discourse for English teachers at a time of rapid expansion of secondary education during the post-war years. We enter into a dialogue with contributors to these early issues in order to test the currency of their values and beliefs today. What is their attitude towards the teaching of literature in Australia? What are their views specifically with regard to the place of Australian writing in the secondary English curriculum? Does English still have anything in common with what contributors to these early issues understood the subject to be? We are posing these questions, not out of some musty interest in the ghosts of debates past, but in an effort to create a perspective on the present, and to think outside the mental cage of standards-based reforms and construction of subject English that is currently being foisted on the profession by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).' (Authors' introduction, p. 266)
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