Teaching Small ‘l’ Literature : Lessons from English in Australia single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2011... 2011 Teaching Small ‘l’ Literature : Lessons from English in Australia
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'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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    y separately published work icon Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings Brenton Doecke (editor), Larissa McLean-Davies (editor), Philip Mead (editor), Kent Town : Wakefield Press Australian Association for the Teaching of English , 2011 Z1851330 2011 anthology criticism 'What role should Australian literature play in the school curriculum? What principles should guide our selection of Australian texts? To what extent should concepts of the nation and a national identity frame the study of Australian writing? What do we imagine Australian literature to be? How do English teachers go about engaging their students in reading Australian texts?

    This volume brings together teachers, teacher educators, creative writers and literary scholars in a joint inquiry that takes a fresh look at what it means to teach Australian literature. The immediate occasion for the publication of these essays is the implementation of The Australian Curriculum: English, which several contributors subject to critical scrutiny. In doing so, they question the way that literature teaching is currently being constructed by standards-based reforms, not only in Australia but elsewhere.

    The essays assembled in this volume transcend the divisions that have sometimes marred debates about the place of Australian literature in the school curriculum. They all recognise the complexity of what secondary English teachers do in their efforts to engage young people in a rich and meaningful curriculum. They also highlight the need for both secondary and tertiary educators to cultivate an awareness of the cultural and intellectual traditions that mediate their professional practice and to encourage a critically responsive pedagogy.' (Publisher's blurb)
         Kent Town : Wakefield Press Australian Association for the Teaching of English , 2011     pg. 266-306
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