Although "VCE English Language (EL)" has been offered for twenty years in Victoria, Australia, the subject, and especially students' experience of it, has had little evaluation. Using data from four surveys conducted across seven years with over 1500 Unit 3-4 "EL" students, augmented by VCAA enrolment data, a profile of…

'Asia literacy' can be loosely defined as having 'some understanding of Asia and its languages in order to engage with it and communicate with its people' (Erebus Consulting Partners, 2002). The Australian Curriculum has prioritised children's development of Asia literacy, specifically through articulating the cross-curriculum priority defined as…

This reflection draws on a non Indigenous educators' first four years of practice in Arnhem Land, to reflect on the varying perspectives that surround Indigenous education, specifically in literacy. Tensions are described between the challenge of finding rigorous and effective literacy pedagogies, while problematising the notions of…

The ancient literary form of commonplace books offers rich possibilities to students and teachers of English in Australian schools in the 21st century. By briefly tracing early uses of commonplace books and examining contemporary approaches to the teaching of writing, this paper re-imagines the 15th century commonplace book as a personal learning…

The Personal Growth (PG) model, as outlined by John Dixon in 1967, is unquestionably still recognisable to English teachers, remaining aligned to their philosophy of teaching English. This article traces a key aspect of the history of Personal Growth and explores present continuities traceable to Dartmouth in 1966, in suggesting an invigorated…

Many English teachers identify as readers, drawing on broad literary knowledge to shape their pedagogy and to meet ever-increasing curriculum demands. Teachers identifying as writers, however, face the paradox of enabling authorial agency while adhering to time constraints and rigid assessment criteria. This article examines the role of the…

This article investigates the perceptions and lived experience of practising middle years' and pre-service teachers of English in their efforts to make sense of, and use metacognition. The investigation focuses on metacognition as a means to enhance student learning by fostering self-awareness of their students' thinking as they engage in reading,…

This paper provides a description of practice outlining changes made to English assessment structures for the purpose of facilitating improved teaching and learning. These changes, which included marking, feedback, reporting, and the evaluation of the efficacy of teaching, were implemented across Years 7 to 10 English classes in an independent…

In this article, I report on the first stage of a whole school literacy project," Embedding Literacies in the KLAs" (ELK), which aims to support multilingual learners to access the literacies they need for high stakes curriculum learning. As it is "quality teaching" that has been found to have the greatest impact on student…

This paper is concerned with how refugee stories can be used as the means of exploring values and developing intercultural understanding in the English classroom. To illustrate this possibility, André Dao's (2005) "Vuot Bien--The Search for Freedom: Huong Thi Nguen's Story," about the impact of war and oppression on people's lives,…

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 and…

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…

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 changing…

This paper uses a narrative constructed from diary entries made over the course of a year teaching English as a platform for examining some of the political, economic, educational and socio-cultural contexts into which the Digital Education Revolution (DER) was launched as policy. It analyses the underlying imperatives, components and balance of…

Garth Boomer's ideas in "Negotiating the Curriculum" (1992a) resonate with discussions of shifting teacher and student roles and relationships in the "student voice" movement. Boomer (1988) critiqued his earlier conception of power in "Negotiating the Curriculum," asserting that he would "now like to write a book…