This paper draws on a case study undertaken by an English teacher in a rural school with a Year 12 English class, most of whom had been singularly unsuccessful in terms of NCEA achievement. The case study was undertaken as part of a two-year project, directed by the first author, entitled: "Teachers as writers: Transforming professional identity…

Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Road to Mandalay" in 1892 when Burma was a British colony and Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. In the poem, Mandalay is a city some 500 miles along the Irrawaddy River from the capital, Rangoon. British troops stationed in Burma were transported on the river by paddle steamers. The picture painted of Asia is one…

This article argues that theoretical understandings of multimodality have enormous potential for assessment purposes in secondary school contexts. Informed by the work of three researchers in three North American high schools, the article offers vignettes of the effective assessment of communicative competence in English classrooms that draws on…

What are the possibilities for poetry? This paper introduces approaches to creating and teaching poetry through a critical survey of contemporary practitioners within the field. Analysis of ekphrastic traditions, comics and concrete poetry, artists books, graffiti poems, film, performance and interdisciplinary collaborations reveal new…

The language of story and poetry, mythopoetic language, is at the heart of our English discipline. It is language designed to enrich our comprehension of our inner lives, a language that helps us to see beyond the literal, beyond the world revealed to us through other disciplines like science and mathematics, history and geography. In this it…

The extent to which our students, and indeed we, are manipulated by popular culture and a normative perception of an ideal way to be is an issue of increasing import. The changes we make to our teaching to engage students in this issue must be conducive to meaningful learning and subsequent academic achievement. The changes we make are based on…

In this article, the author shares her experience when she wrote a poem anonymously to an English teacher, who never mentioned the poem, nor gave the tiniest suggestion that the teacher read or received it. In reflection, the author thinks that she had developed her personal and emotional literacy by composing a poem which might not have been very…

A critical/creative paradigm in contemporary English carries with it an imperative that students should be given opportunities for deep engagement with texts relevant to what matters in their everyday lives. In this paper, I argue that the materiality of everyday life includes the physical and geographic places where we live. When students live in…

This paper reports on one strand of a research project conducted with prominent writers who are also English teachers from around Australia. It asks what were the conditions which led these writers to come to writing and what conditions have they created in their own work with high school students that establish and promote an enabling pedagogy…

"World of Warcraft" is an online computer game with over nine million players, many of them technically-minded young males. A proportion of these young males engage in spontaneous creative writing about their game adventures. They enjoy highly formulaic genres, such as the epic poem, with its complex technical requirements. This has implications…

In order to better understand the worth of aesthetic experience in encountering poetry, fresh perspectives are helpful. This paper introduces the reader to modern stylistics: that is linguistic examinations of "the speaker's meaning" in literature and notes such "scientific" approaches to poetry do find common metaphysical ground with leading…

Presents a reflection on the processes that led to the writing and reading one of the poems from a work-in-progress, "Crossing the Border." Connects the author's writing experience to his teaching practice, supposedly with an underlying belief that there must be a nexus. Concludes that above all, he seeks to stimulate, even provoke, students into…

Discusses many ideas the author has regarding the literature canon including what he thinks should be taught and for what reasons. Makes a case for the classroom contexts that allow students to develop into confident, enthusiastic, and responsible readers of canonical poetry. (SG)

Considers how in "Post-Something" times, misquotation has become a reading practice, or at least a strategy within certain practices of reading. Suggests that Post-Modernism needs a canon, a continuity of culture, in order to be Post-Anything. Describes how in making his own canon, the author posits certain genre qualities that appeal to him, and…

Presents six narratives from teachers including: "VCE English at Lilydale High School" (Valerie Mayer); "Should 'I' Be Their Teacher" (Mark Matcott); "Teaching Poetry to Year 7 English Students" (Janet Lyons); "Creative Art Therapy and Mandalas" (Demi Flessa); "Would the 'Real' Teacher Please Stand Up?" (Anna Hayman); and "When Volumes Speak…