Paying attention to texts: literacy, culture and curriculum.

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Paying attention to texts literacy, culture and
curriculum.

• Catherine Beavis
• Deakin University

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AATE Statements of Belief

• We respect the enduring values and traditions of
  Australias cultural heritage.
• We believe students come to understand themselves
  and their world through engagement with a range
  of cultures and the ways these cultures represent
  human experience.
• We value the power of the imagination and
  literary expression to provide pleasure and
  enrich life.
• We are committed to developing powerfully
  literate citizens who are able to effectively
  participate and realise their goals and
  aspirations in the twenty first century.
• We use research and evidence to inform practice
  and improve the learning of students.
• We are committed to ongoing professional learning
  especially through active participation in a
  range of professional communities.

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Australian Literature in Education Roundtable

• Classic works, both from Australias literary
  past and from English and world literature,
  should form a prominent part of English in school
  and university curricula
• Literature presents many perspectives on life,
  powerfully imagined and memorably expressed, and
  that exposure to this variety of ways of thinking
  about the world is one of the main benefits of
  literary study, particularly in a multicultural
  and diverse society such as ours
• A principal aim of curricula should be to
  encourage in students a love of literature and
  reading
• Teachers have a critical role to play and need
  the opportunity to explore literature through
  dialogue with their students as a way of
  fostering a love of reading.

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• Classic works, both from Australias literary
  past and from English and world literature,
  should form a prominent part of English in school
  and university curricula
• Literature presents many perspectives on life,
  powerfully imagined and memorably expressed, and
  that exposure to this variety of ways of thinking
  about the world is one of the main benefits of
  literary study, particularly in a multicultural
  and diverse society such as ours
• A principal aim of curricula should be to
  encourage in students a love of literature and
  reading
• Teachers have a critical role to play and need
  the opportunity to explore literature through
  dialogue with their students as a way of
  fostering a love of reading.

• We respect the enduring values and traditions of
  Australias cultural heritage
• We believe students come to understand themselves
  and their world through engagement with a range
  of cultures and the ways these cultures represent
  human experience.
• We value the power of the imagination and
  literary expression to provide pleasure and
  enrich life

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The Roundtable recommends

• The Roundtable recommends to the Australian
  Government and governments of the states and
  territories that
• The study of literature should form a core
  element of English courses in schools, introduced
  in the primary years and developed at secondary
  level
• Nationally consistent curricula and core
  standards, which are currently being developed by
  education ministers, should include a component
  on Australian literature
• This component should be included in any external
  assessment
• A group of distinguished writers, teachers and
  scholars should be convened to establish a list
  of Australian literary works that form part of
  the intellectual inheritance of all Australians
• Professional scholars of literature and
  contemporary Australian writers should be
  involved in the designing and supervision of
  English curricula in schools.

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MEDIA RELEASE 5 August 2007 AUSTRALIAN
LITERATURE ALIVE AND WELL IN SCHOOLS

• Teachers of English have been excluded from
  deliberations by an expert panel studying way of
  encouraging more students to study Australian
  literature in schools and universities.
• A high-level task force hosted by the Australian
  Council for the Arts in Canberra and given the
  project of examining ways of making more
  Australian literature available to students, is
  seriously flawed, according to Mark Howie,
  Vice-President of the Australian Association for
  the Teaching of English.
• What does the Australia Council anticipate
  will come of the statement following the meeting
  on Tuesday if it does not seek to work
  productively with teachers and teacher
  associations? said Mr Howie.

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• It is amazing that the people who really know
  whats going on, the people who teach the subject
  and know our students, are not to be consulted on
  the very topic which this eminent round table has
  been asked to examine.
• For all their expertise, the participants at the
  round table simply do not have close knowledge of
  what is being taught in the nations secondary
  English classrooms, or the nature and diversity
  of the student body, Mr. Howie continued.
• English teachers in Australian schools have a
  deep and abiding commitment to Australian
  literature and the cultural heritage of this
  nation. The Literature Round Table should be an
  opportunity to recognise and affirm this
  commitment.
• The range of Australian titles made available to
  teachers and students on reading lists around the
  country is extensive.

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• In NSW 46 of the 125 texts prescribed for the HSC
  are written and produced by Australians. Students
  have the opportunity to study acknowledged
  classic and contemporary works. Prescribed
  authors include Henry Lawson, A.B. Patterson,
  Patrick White, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Kenneth
  Slessor, Robert Dessaix, Gwen Harwood, Rosemary
  Dobson, Judith Wright and Drusilla Modjeska.
• The Victorian reading lists include, amongst many
  others, works by Kate Grenville, Bruce Dawe,
  Beverly Farmer, Nick Enright, Robert Drewe, Les
  Murray, Raimond Gaita, Gillian Mears and Judith
  Beveridge.
• Recommended to teachers and students in other
  states are many of the same names as in NSW and
  Victoria, and also esteemed authors such as Thea
  Astley, Murray Bail, Elizabeth Jolley, Carmel
  Bird, Richard Flanagan, Jean Bedford, Sonya
  Hartnett and Peter Goldsworthy.

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• English teachers continue to advance the cause
  of Australian literature. It is disconcerting to
  us that the Australia Council has not
  acknowledged this.
• The fact that the round table will discuss how
  to get more Australian writing on reading lists
  suggests that the whole foundation of this
  enterprise is faulty. They havent done their
  homework. The nations literary heritage is too
  important to be subsumed by the manic pursuit of
  the so-called culture wars.

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Literary rescue mission

• A series of groundbreaking articles by Rosemary
  Neill in The Australian last year charted the
  decline of Oz lit in our universities. In
  schools, meanwhile, Australian literature has
  been wedged, along with literature generally, as
  a cultural studies-oriented approach has loaded
  the English syllabus in senior years with
  competing forms of cultural expression, including
  films and television shows. It seems one of the
  not-so-precious freedoms enjoyed by Australian
  writers these days is the freedom of not being
  taught. As a result, classic works by some of
  Australias most important writers, including
  past masters such as Patrick White and Christina
  Stead and living greats such as Gerald Murnane
  and Moorhouse, are out of print.

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Literacy rescue cont

• The round table agreed that a study of
  Australian, English and world literature should
  form the core of English courses in schools. And
  it said nationally consistent curriculums and
  core syllabus standards being developed by
  education ministers should include a component on
  Australian literature.
• In addition, the round table sought an audit of
  the level of teaching of Australian literature in
  universities. It warmly applauded the initiative
  announced by Education Minister Julie Bishop on
  Monday to endow a new chair in Australian
  literature, bringing the national total to three.
• A year ago, the History Summit decided that it is
  part of the birthright of all young Australians
  to know their nations story, as it has been
  chronicled by our historians. Now, the literature
  round table has asserted that it is equally their
  right to know how that story has been imagined by
  our writers. (Imre Salusinszky, Your Say Blogg
  Australian August 7)

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Curriculum, national curriculum, cultural
identity

• a struggle over meaning and resources (Goodson
  1988 )
• The kinds of study that constitute English have
  always been, inescapably about culture, and thus
  cultural heritage, since the term, and the
  evolution of its practices have evolved side by
  side. (Homer 200717)
• cultural concern, when applied to English in
  2007, is now no longer assumed, as it has been
  for many years. Rather, it is something that has
  to be firmly asserted. (Homer 200717)

• Which texts?
• With what attention?
• Who owns the curriculum?

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And againWhat shall we teach? and how?

• We come back to some very basic questions of
  curriculum and pedagogy. We ask, ourselves and
  each other What shall we teach? and how? That
  is of course a transform of another well-known
  question in the curriculum field at large, 'What
  should the schools teach?' behind which is
  another 'What knowledge is of most worth?' the
  title of a famous 1859 essay by Herbert Spencer
  (Franklin, 1999 459). At the more specific
  level of classrooms and programming, all this is
  captured for me in those two key questions What
  to teach and how to teach? or rather, What to
  teach in English? and How best to teach English
• Green, IFTE 2003, (2004 p.298)

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English for an era of instability

• Science still provides foundational knowledge
  about the means by which Western cultures engage
  with the natural world. For Mathematics, for
  English, as for some other curriculum subjects,
  similarly deep purposes might be seen
  Mathematics as the subject which has its
  specialised means for projecting theoretically
  satisfactory accounts of the physical world, and
  English as the subject that provides means for
  understanding the relation of an inner world of
  imagination and desire with the outer world of
  culture and social demands. (Kress 2002134)

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Eight challenges for literary English in
contemporary times

• Retheorising the aesthetic.
• Canonical texts in the 21st Century
• Cultural salience and diversity
• Multimodal texts and the aesthetic
• Out of school textual experience (digital and
  popular culture)
• Multimodal texts and assessment
• Students as makers and designers
• word to image imagination and design

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Working with classic texts
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Canonical Texts in the 21st Century Bell
Shakespeare

• Retheorise relevance and reference
• Iconoclastic staging
• Build connectedness with students and schools
• Text as performance
• Text as multimodal
• Students as designers
• Teachers as agential
• Digital dimensions

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Canonical Texts in the 21st Century Bell
Shakespeare

• Retheorise relevance and reference
• Iconoclastic staging
• Build connectedness with students and schools
• Text as performance
• Text as multimodal
• Students as designers
• Teachers as agential
• Digital dimensions

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Australian ScreenOnlinehttp//australianscreen.co
m.au/
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Rich resources, multimodal literacies, visual
texts

• Why Austscreen? - multimodal learning, digital
  literacies, rich resources, real texts
• Curriculum - the story we tell our children
  about our past(s), our present(s) and our
  future(s).
• Madeleine Grumet (1981)/Bill Green, IFTE keynote

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Statements of Learning for English

• Three broad categories of text are used within
  the Statements of Learning for English. These are
  imaginative texts, information texts, and
  argument texts. All categories include texts
  that are print and electronic and they may be
  found, for example, in books, films, television
  programs, CD-Roms and websites.
• Imaginative texts texts that involve the use of
  language to represent, recreate, shape and
  explore human experience in real and imagined
  worlds.
• Information texts texts that involve the use of
  language to represent ideas and information
  related to people, places, events, things,
  concepts and issues
• Argument texts texts that systematically present
  a point of view or seek to persuade an audience.

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Curriculum planning and the Austscreen site

• Student teachers, Deakin University
• Plan 3 lessons making use of the Austscreen
  website, together with theoretical justification
  and reference to key reading.
• Lessons could focus centrally on Austcreen site,
  or use it in support of other areas.
• One, two or three lessons to make use of site.

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Approaches and Ideas

• Issues and themes
• Documentary and news footage
• Representation and point of view
• Argument and persuasive language in written and
  visual forms
• Literary texts, novels and film
• Poetry
• Humour
• Film as text
• Writing
• Drama

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Classroom approaches

• Clips specified by teachers
• Students required to search for own clips
• Data projection by teachers of selected clips
• Student access to site on computers individually
• Clips incorporated into classes as one resource
  amongst others
• Clips as the sole texts studied
• Integration of clips into a mix of classroom
  activities - reading, writing, speaking,
  listening, viewing.

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http//www.youtube.com/watch?vX5xFMmK5Ujs
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Critical Literacy and ICT

• The integration of ICTs and critical literacy are
  no longer academic or innovative pursuits but are
  now framed as the responsibilities of all
  educators within curriculum frameworks and
  syllabuses from the early years through to
  post-compulsory education across Australia
• How are digital texts both like and unlike other
  texts to be read and written in subject
  English?
• How might teachers use digital texts as texts for
  close and critical reading?
• What does it mean to author a digital text?
• What might critical approaches to the study and
  production of digital texts look like in the
  middle years English/literacy classroom?
• - Kerin and Nixon(2004)

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(No Transcript)
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Computer games in the classroom - reading,
writing and multimodality

• Tensions and constraints in bringing together old
  and new modalities of print and digital texts and
  literacies
• How interactive multimodal texts might be
  incorporated into English curriculum
• How to conceive of, use, teach and respond to
  writing in the new communications landscape
• Issues around borders and identity for subject
  English when working with texts like these

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Texts are changing

• A move from the fixed to the fluid the text is
  no longer contained between the covers or by the
  limits of a page
• Texts are revised, updated, added to and appended
  (and often archived)
• Genres borrow freely, hybridise and mutate
• Texts become collaborative and multivocal, with
  replies, links, posted comments and borrowings
• Reading and writing paths are non-linear and
  epistemology is rhyzomic
• Multimedia allows for a rich interplay of modes
  as texts become multimodal (Merchant 2006)

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Redefinition of reader/writer relationship

• A move from the control of the author to the
  control of the reader
• Textual interaction and collaboration which
  results in shared authorship
• The emergence of multiple and diverse affinity
  groups
• The new reading paths and writing processes
  associated with screen based texs
• Identity is contingent anonymity and role
  experimentation (or deception) are always
  possible (Merchant 2006)

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Changing contexts

• A sense of space is shared as the local becomes
  global
• The time is now as we inhabit a world of
  co-presence and synchronicity
• Boundaries between work and leisure begin to blur
• Distinctions between public and private are less
  clear
• The serious and the frivolous intermingle
  (Merchant 2006)

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Mode, imagination and design

• How will shifts in modal uses affect forms of
  knowing and imagination?
• Imagination produced by engagement with the
  written text was both an acceptance of externally
  given order and the possibility of action seen as
  a move towards an inner world.
• Imagination in the sense required by the demands
  of design - my imposition of order on the
  representational world, whether as text maker or
  as reader - is a move toward action in and on the
  outer world. (Kress 2003)

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Paying attention to texts literacy, culture and
curriculum

• Which texts?
• What literacies?
• Whose culture?
• Whose curriculum?
• Deep purposes for English in uncertain times