My thoughts on the question of 'Textuality as the Centre of English' were presented at a Roundtable session at the 2020 International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) Conference. Through critical discourse analysis of media and curriculum texts, I highlight how the 'being' of the English subjects is always and already textual in…

In evaluating some of Heaney's prose writings about the art of poetry -- what I have called his 'Poetics' -- the paper explores how those ideas could enhance the teaching of poetry in the upper post-primary schools. The paper is divided into four closely interconnected sections. The first section evaluates Heaney's thoughts about the potential…

Drawn from an ethnographic study of spoken word poetry in Australia, this article offers case studies of two youth poets and follows their journeys with spoken word over three years as they performed in community-based slams, engaged with the New South Wales English Extension 2 curriculum, and served as mentor poets in culturally and…

In this article, the authors describe how integrating music with reading and writing practices stimulated transmediation to (1) honor musical students' identities, (2) deepen readers' meaning making with literature, and (3) invite writers' memories to generate emotional grist for composing poetry. The authors share examples to inspire teachers to…

As part of an ethnographic study of a secondary English Language Arts classroom, one teacher took a critical translingual approach to curriculum and instruction, encouraging students to engage in translanguaging and to explore the intersections of language with power and identity. The larger study's central question was, what does participation in…

This essay questions the place that conversations about 'race' hold in the English classroom. I hope to reveal the problems that may come with easily dismissing tense and racially charged dialogues about language and identity. I also explore the way classroom talk opens up an opportunity for students to create and contest different meanings and…

This article explores how Australian English teachers can thoughtfully and critically address the cross-curriculum priority 'Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia' in secondary classrooms. It builds on our prior research, which highlighted factors that shape teacher attitudes towards addressing this cross-curriculum priority, the perceived…

Read and admired throughout the world, Shakespeare's plays and poetry have been the guiding light of statesmen, of authors, and of artists. His writings are the indispensable foundation for understanding English literature, language, and rhetoric. Yet less than 8% of the nation's top universities require English majors to take even a single course…

For over a decade, America's educational policymakers have devalued the role of literature in K-12 classrooms. By welding federal funding to initiatives such as Reading First, government officials have downplayed the importance of reading literature and have argued against giving children voluntary, free reading time in which students can select…

This article explores the views of children's poet Michael Rosen in relation to poetry in education. It is based on an interview in which Rosen not only discusses the significance of encouraging young people to engage with poetry at school but also analyzes a number of threats to poetry's place in the English curriculum. This article identifies…

This article takes as its focus Lefebvre's trialectic of conceived, perceived and lived spaces as a lens through which to scrutinise the 2013 English Literature Curriculum, and to explore the extent to which creative spaces might exist within that curriculum. The article analyses how the curriculum is envisaged by policymakers and how it might be…

Drawing on a strand of findings from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, this article examines contemporary understandings of poetry performance in teaching contexts. Positioning these understandings in relation to past practices, we…

It is not clear that the literary genre called poetry has a future in the face of a reduction in literary study that Common Core's English language arts standards implicitly mandate-- and in the context of Common Core's drive for workforce development. Common Core claims the standards will prepare students equally for "college and…

Poetry, as a textual form for critical study and composition, continues to occupy a significant place in Australian senior secondary English syllabus documents and classrooms (cf. Carter, 2012). Indeed, within the senior secondary English syllabus in New South Wales (NSW), poetry remains one of the core mandatory types of texts for study by the…

The Post Graduate Teachers who teach English as a second language to Higher Secondary Classes that is 11th and 12th grades need to cultivate a good sense of appreciation for poetry. They must have an inherent thirst for reading poetry aloud and competence to elucidate the essential characteristics of poetry. A study was launched to understand the…