This paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated formative assessment practices of Senior English teachers in the standards-based Queensland assessment system. This paper focuses in particular on the teachers' provision of feedback on rough draft summative assessment items. It identifies the links between assessment criteria…

We report in this paper on one aspect of a project designed to support teachers with the demands of the Language strand of the Australian Curriculum for English as this guides their development of a coherent account of knowledge about language and their implementation of this in building their students' literacy repertoires. We map the…

Maxine Greene urges us to look beyond the perspective of the system with its spotlight on data, outcomes and performance goals, and to focus instead on what she calls "the intentionality and concreteness of everyday life". "One must see", she writes, "from the point of view of the participant in the midst of what is…

This paper focuses on Australian texts with Asian representations, which will be discussed in terms of Ethical Intelligence (Weinstein, 2011) explored through drama. This approach aligns with the architecture of the "Australian Curriculum: English" (AC:E, v5, 2013), in particular the general capabilities of "ethical…

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…

In this article, the author reflects on keynotes by Debra Myhill and Wayne Sawyer in a search for ways with grammar. One of the keynote speakers, Debra Myhill, shared her research into teaching grammar that she had conducted in the UK. Myhill had asked a sample of teachers to follow a specified unit plan and had conducted pre- and post-testing to…

This article provides an introduction to the kind of computer software that is used to score student writing in some high stakes testing programs, and that is being promoted as a teaching and learning tool to schools. It sketches the state of play with machines for the scoring of writing, and describes how these machines work and what they do.…

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…

"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…

This study focuses on two high school seniors as they wrote in their British Literature and Psychology classes. We analyse the writing experiences of the two volunteer students as they produced formal academic writing (research, essays, and synopses), personal writing (poems, stories, and personal narratives), and hybrid writing (research written…

Describes a classroom-based research project that introduced explicit writing pedagogy with students whose previous experience was with process writing. Finds improvement and suggests a successful literacy pedagogy (1) is underpinned by the functional view of language and is taught explicitly and systematically; (2) combines instruction with…

Presents material from two first-year teachers' case writings and discussions about teaching writing which resulted in a "linguistic event," an opportunity to construct new knowledge about teaching. Claims the teachers were able to reflect on concerns in depth, validate each other's practice, and explore the value of talking and writing for…

Reasons that if one of the best ways to motivate writing is to write with the students, perhaps the best way to teach English is to talk with the students, read to them, write with them, exploring mutual concerns in an effort to express feelings and thoughts. (RB)

Urges writing teachers to get back to these basics: valuing writing and enthusiasm for writing, showing interest in and responsiveness to students as writers, encouraging reading for pleasure, making use of insights into the writing process, and helping students develop self-editing that sharpens ideas while eliminating mechanical errors. (RL)

Identifies 20 major ideas about writing instruction resulting from a study of 93 Australian teachers of Grade 10 English. (RL)