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…

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…

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…

In this article, the researchers employ a linguistically informed approach to close reading that teaches a moral dilemma through an autobiographical short story. The approach, based on systemic functional linguistics, uses genre analysis that can draw students' attention to the structure, vocabulary, and grammar within literary texts, helping them…

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…

The term "close reading" is problematic for English teachers, yet a heightened awareness of the role that language plays in mediating experience and social relationships is fundamental to an informed and critically engaged citizenry. This essay finds that a focus on abstracted ideological content of literary texts comes at the cost of…

This piece explores how moving from grammar instruction to language study empowers students and their writing. To shift perspective and re-envision how language discussion can begin in the classroom, suggestions are offered with power dynamics and contextual needs of real communication situations. The authors detail activities that draw on…

The authors explore how the use of sarcasm in an urban high school English classroom fostered critical language awareness and positive relationships among diverse classroom participants. The guiding research question was, What were the social-pedagogical functions of sarcasm in this classroom? Drawing on interactional sociolinguistics and…

This paper explores the application of texture and textual attractors within a cognitive stylistic pedagogy for English teachers. Texture, defined as the feeling of building and experiencing a fictional world, is here taken up as a facilitative way of thinking about how reading, language, experience and cognition operate in the classroom. On the…

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…

This article is equal parts educational history and political philosophy. We aim to remind readers that subject English (SE) and indeed state education emerge from the contradictory impulses of classical liberalism, and that, more than simply resembling citizenship education, SE emerges in the first instance as a form of highly normativising…

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…

The emphasis on 21st century learning practices in Australia has led to a paradox of concerns in the field of teaching. This paper examines dual deficiencies related to teaching film in the subject of English; being the lack of contextualisation and authenticity in traditional modes of film study, and the widening gulf between teachers and…

In the British "zone" of the English education world, which Australia largely inhabited throughout the 20th century, the key book that came out of Dartmouth was John Dixon's "Growth through English." Some in the British "zone" may not even be aware of the equivalent American book, Herbert Muller's "The Uses of…

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…