English teachers face the shifting landscapes of education, the rapidly expanding repertoire of information and communication technologies, and the diverse nature, interests, and abilities of their students with increasing confidence, skill and creativity. The management of such shifting landscapes, in order to facilitate effective learning,…

This article provides a critical review of popular models for literacy pedagogy with regard for the needs of low-literacy refugee-background students. We argue that in a context of high linguistic diversity there is a need to re-evaluate teaching practices and curriculum in a way that is more responsive to difference and which pays closer…

This article reports a research project investigating the formative assessment practices of two teachers of Year 12 English in Queensland. This is a high-stakes year that is focused on summative assessment for certification purposes. In this school-based, externally-moderated, standards-referenced system, however, teachers are also expected to…

This article assumes that literacy practices are social practices. Based on the New Literacy Studies (Street, 2005) this view of literacy provides an understanding that the ways a person reads and writes change, depending on that person's identity, the type of texts that are involved and the context in which those texts and identities are located.…

As educators, we write about how we teach and how our students learn, but often there are some things missing from these accounts. These "somethings" are the animations and agitations that attend most deep learning. These are not easy to describe, particularly because they are often only visible in passing moments. I argue that story-telling is…

Known as the "STELLA" (Standards for Teachers of English Language & Literacy in Australia) Standards Framework, there are a set of nine principles which all teachers of English in Australia should aspire to weave into their professional teaching practices. This article describes the journey that Miss Amy Andrew had embarked on in order to find her…

The most reported outcome of programs for teaching English in Indigenous schools in Australia is that there continues to be a significant gap in the level of attainment of English language and literacy between Indigenous students as a group and other Australian students (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), 2008a,…

The issue of boys' literacy has been explicitly named as "dangerous territory"--difficult to negotiate in terms of the validity of "failure" rhetoric, the stereotyping of boys' abilities and interests and the intersection of gender with factors such as class and geographical location. In this article, we address the issue of boys' literacy through…

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…

The English teaching profession, spurred on by media and federal politics, has tended to construct aesthetic reading and political reading within a dichotomous conceptual framework (Morgan, 1997; Devine, 2004; Donnelly, 2007). The article argues that this need not be so, and that the two apparently opposed modes of reading can be performed not…

The relationship between home and school is often raised in public discussion about boys' education as an aspect of boys' overall lower achievement in school, and particularly in literacy, relative to girls. A critical review of two influential Australian and one UK government commissioned reports into boys' education sets the scene for our…

This article talks about the Australian Government "Summer School for Teachers" programme which was announced as part of the 2007-08 Budget Package: "Realising Our Potential." Funds earmarked for this initiative totalled some $102 million over four years, and it was sold to the Australian public as something that would both recognise and reward up…

The author was keen to look at advertising with her online classes, both in Business Enterprise (looking at how businesses operate, target marketing, language used in business etc) and in Creative Writing as she felt that this was a topic which worked in both areas and was an important one due to the huge impact and the big intrusion that…

In his paper in "English in Australia" in 2002, Bill Green called for a literacy project of our own, and for the need to think again, and think newly about the place of literary literacy within contemporary curriculum. But what does literary literacy mean in curriculum that recognises a wide diversity of texts and literacies? If literature and…

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…