Cirrus@Austlit

'I would like to explore some aspects of the experience of literary knowledge, amongst and between teachers and students, as reported in the 2010 Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC)-funded project Australian Literature Teaching Survey. This exploration is framed by the contexts of that survey, particularly the history of 'English' in Australian education and its evolution, in the second half of the twentieth century, to include the study of Australian literature (see Dale, 1997; Reid, 1988) and recent responses to a federal government led proposal for a national or 'Australian' curriculum (K-12), which includes Australian literature within the proposed English strand. These reflections on the issues and questions that came out of the work of the ALTC report are influenced by my understanding of the disciplinary history of tertiary literary studies and of literary education at the secondary level, as well as by my own experiences of teaching literature within those educational and institutional contexts. These reflections are also informed by studies of English pedagogy that aim to pay attention to the lifeworlds of students and teachers and their experiences in the classroom (like Doecke and Parr, 2008).' (Author's introduction, 52)