Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share findings from empirically driven conceptual research into the implications for English teachers of understanding generative AI as a "tool" for writing. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reports early findings from an Australian National Survey of English teachers and interrogates the…

It is sometimes claimed that teaching grammar is elitist. This article contends that in actual fact, far from being elitist, grammar is a vital ingredient in the English language teaching mix. Since the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics there has been a school of thought in the English speaking world that the formal teaching of grammar is…

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…

School systems in North America have widely adopted social-emotional learning (SEL) to promote students' well-being and academic development over the last few decades. Despite the abundant evidence supporting the efficacy of content-specific, standalone SEL interventions, there is little knowledge about how to infuse SEL practices into regular…

In this conceptual article we offer a vision and a manifesto for an anti-racist English education, focusing particularly on language. Locating our work with anti-racist efforts in the UK, we conduct a brief historical reflection of these efforts, before turning our attention to the current politico-economic context and making a case for the urgent…

This essay uses storytelling as a mode of inquiry to explore how students with languages other than English and with diasporic experiences and identities negotiate a pathway for themselves in a relentlessly Anglophone environment. I share a story that provides a small window into the everyday work of an English teacher in a large, linguistically…

The practice of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has been known to be troublesome to teachers. (Webb & Tierney, 2020). The authors argue that a mentoring approach based on threshold concepts in SoTL has the potential to lead to more confident conceptual border crossing by new entrants to the SoTL of English communication. A…

Purpose: This paper aims to consider the proliferation of journalistic articles that declare English Language Arts' death--Heller's 2023 The New Yorker piece "The End of the English Major" as a most recent iteration. It puts recent mainstream publications in conversation, reading them as a genre of elegies that, while largely discussing…

Engaging the methodology of poetic inquiry, this paper explores both the teaching and learning of poetry. Through a combination of interpretation and reflection, the reader embarks on a journey from the author's childhood experiences with poetry to the experiences of her students in an ELA class. Pinar's method of currere provides a lens to…

The following article recommends Texas high school English teachers to select "All the Pretty Horses" (McCarthy, 1992), the critically acclaimed, best-selling novel by Cormac McCarthy, as a reading option for students. Set in rural Texas and Mexico, "All the Pretty Horses" provides an engaging reading experience that would…

This article argues that writing teachers should allow, and even encourage, students to code-mesh in community college classrooms. By looking at and analyzing code-meshed writing produced by three students in an English 101 class, the author argues that code-meshing provides students with both a craft-wise approach to writing and a way to address…

Current research suggests that students who struggle with grammar, spelling, mechanics and other "problems of ability," as well as students who suffer from "problems of engagement," as well as those students who see reading and writing as a chore, can benefit from creative writing assignments and learn to enjoy reading and…

In this paper we take on Green's (2017) orientation of the Australian Curriculum: English and consider what might it hold for the students of Australia. We set about analysing eighteen minutes of storytelling by a group of young 9-12 year old Kunibídji males from Maningrida in the far North of the Northern Territory in Australia, making this…

In this series, we explore technology-related themes and topics. The series aims to discuss and demystify what may be new areas for some readers and to consider their relevance for English language teachers. This paper explores the potential applicability of ChatGPT--a generative, text-based artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot--to ELT. It offers…

This article engages speculatively with Rachel Tonkin's award-winning work of children's literary non-fiction "Leaf litter: Exploring the mysteries of a hidden world" as a potential text for study in the primary or secondary literacy/English classroom. It considers the affordances and issues that may accompany teaching this text, and the…