Editorial / Karen Moni - 2
STELLA Supplements Superior Standards in School / Amy Andrew - 4
Around the States - 6
Challenging the Achievement Gap: Teaching English in Indigenous Schools / Glenda Shopen - 9
Abstract: 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, 2008b, 2008c). The notion of
the gap is currently maintained using the National Surveys of English Literacy Achievement in Years 3,
5, 7 and 9 which are benchmarked against National Standards (Masters & Foster, 1997). Drawing on
extensive ethnographic work undertaken in a variety of educational settings in Indigenous contexts,
this article challenges the notion that there is a single image of failure that has resulted from English
language and literacy programs for Indigenous students in Australia. It argues instead that the potential
for success that exists in these programs is sometimes realised in practice but is never assessed as
part of policy. Furthermore, it is clear that there are institutional structures, organising principles and
cultural values which are so pervasive that they systematically put at risk their potential for success.
Boys' Literacy: Negotiating the Territory / Wayne Sawyer, Michael Singh & Dacheng Zhao - 19
Abstract: 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 the lens of engagement, in particular using the MeE
framework as we report on a national study into the motivation and engagement of boys, which
had an emphasis on boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study investigated sites which were
gaining strong outcomes for boys through a focus on engagement. In particular, we discuss the
literacy programs from two sites in the study. We address the complexities of the issues faced by
these schools as well as the complexity of their approaches and we believe they provide highly useful
examples of attempts to meet the needs of their boys without simplifying the issues involved.
Into the (Textual) West / Susanne Gannon - 29
Abstract: 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 areas that are habitually disparaged, there
is an additional argument on social justice grounds for enabling students to examine and contest
representations of (their) place in texts. Aesthetic and literary texts – poetry, fiction, drama, visual
images – provide potent opportunities for students to write themselves into the world. Close study of
place-based aesthetic texts provides students with essential knowledge of language forms and features
to experiment with in their own imaginative rewriting of place. In this paper, I use extracts from fiction
and poetry and related writing activities from the Writing western Sydney project to demonstrate
how teachers and students can be supported to make the ‘crucial move … from critique to creation’
(Sawyer, 2008, p. 61). I conclude with an outline of how this approach can be taken up and adapted by
teachers in any location.
Reconfiguring the Aesthetic and the Political in the English Classroom: The 'Bodied' Other and Classroom Conversation / Sarah Golsby-Smith - 39
Abstract: 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 only compatibly, but simultaneously
as one and the same event. Drawing on the disciplines of ethical criticism (Nussbaum, 1990, 1995)
and the new rhetoric (Booth, 1980, 1982, 1988a, 1988b), this article develops ways in which the high
school English students’ ‘civic imagination’ (James, 1907) can be mobilised for civic gain. Furthermore,
this article argues that the modes of reading developed in the classroom that foster this kind of
reading prompt a kind of ‘feminine justice’ (Gilligan & Richards, 2009) that enables students to see
‘the other’ in all her surprising particularity, rather than as a universal category. In fact, it is argued,
that being open to the surprise of the particular is the premise on which apprehending ‘the other’ can
proceed. This argument is situated in sustained reflection on real and particular classrooms, and the
particular texts the students happened to be studying at the time. The critical conclusion is that the
pluralist reading habits that we could engender in the high school English classroom might provide a
healthy and robust ethic for the English teaching profession to develop what Wayne Booth calls a ‘true
college’ of teachers (1998b), whereby pluralism, rather than dichotomy, characterises the profession.
Making Boys at Home in School? Theorising and Researching Literacy (dis)Connections / Susan Nichols & Phil Cormack - 47
Abstract: 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 analysis in this paper. Analysing these reports,
we demonstrate that their conclusions are drawn on the basis of minimal research engagement
with students’ out of school lives, relying instead on extrapolation from boys’ orientations to school
activities. We then examine conceptual resources developed by researchers taking a socio-cultural lens
to relationships between students’ in- and out- of school lives. We describe how we have drawn on
these resources in designing and implementing a research project in collaboration with teachers in six
schools in South Australia In this paper, we report how, given the constraints of a mostly school-based
project, we nevertheless were able to generate significant knowledge about students’ encounters
with literacy practices outside the formal classroom. What we learned as a result of our analysis of
multiple data sets raises questions about the models which construct conflicting relationships between
in and out of school learning, and how these models map onto gender. At the same time, we show
how resourcing teachers to generate knowledge about boys’ out-of-school literacies produced some
pedagogical changes which benefitted the ‘boys of concern’ and all students.
Reviews - 60
Reading and Viewing / Deb McPherson - 66
About the Authors - 72
