Kangaroos on the main street? Using resources to break down stereotypes

There are people in this world who are convinced that kangaroos hop down the main street of major Australian citites every day. While we may get a chuckle out of someone else’s misunderstanding of Australian life, Beryl Exley explores the effects such stereotypes have on children’s understandings of the other and offers practical strategies for carers to consider as they attempt to foster in children respectful attitudes to cultural and language difference

Balancing the equation: New times and new literacies = New LOTE teaching knowledge base demands

I was invited to the MLTAQ Conference, not as a LOTE specialist, nor even as a (competent) LOTE speaker, but to offer some perspectives and participate in conversations about the teaching of LOTE, in particular, the complexities that arise from ‘New Times’ (Hall, 1996a; Anstey, 2002) and ‘New Literacies’ (The New London Group, 2000; Anstey, 2002; Kalantzis & Cope, 2005). My presentation was founded on empirical research undertaken as part of my doctoral thesis (Exley, 2005) where I examined the knowledge bases of three Queensland teachers (two LOTE teachers and one Studies of the Society and Environment – SOES - teacher) providing EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instruction to secondary students in a village area of Indonesia. This research found that in current times, teachers drew on four interrelated professional knowledge bases: content knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, and knowledge of their own and their students’ pedagogic identities. The currency of the study’s findings for present debates in and about LOTE teaching in Queensland were explicated through an analysis of (i) Education Queensland’s frameworks for literacy, ‘Literate Futures: Reading’ (Anstey, 2002), (ii) pedagogic knowledge, ‘Productive Pedagogies’ (Education Queensland, 2002), (iii) my experiences as the Japanese Internship coordinator, and (iv) data from the three language teachers that focused on their own and their students’ pedagogic identities. The plenary was presented as an auditing framework for LOTE teachers’ professional knowledge bases. Teachers were invited to consider both their strengths and possible gaps and from this identify topics for future school- or association-based professional development

Parsing the Australian English curriculum: Grammar, multimodality and cross-cultural texts

The release of the Australian Curriculum English (ACE) by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has revived debates about the role of grammar as English content knowledge. We consider some of the discussion circulating in the mainstream media vis-à-vis the intent of the ACE. We conclude that this curriculum draws upon the complementary tenets of traditional Latin-based grammar and systemic functional linguistics across the three strands of Language, Literature and Literacy in innovative ways. We argue that such an approach is necessary for working with contemporary multimodal and cross-cultural texts. To demonstrate the utility of this new approach, we draw out a set of learning outcomes from Year 6 and then map out a framework for relating the outcomes to the form and function of multimodal language. As a case in point, our analysis is of two online Coca-Cola advertising texts, one each from South Korea and Australia

Teaching spelling in the middle years: Reviewing programs for diverse student groups

In what follows, I draw attention to understandings about the teaching of Standard Australian English spelling developed by being immersed in the URL project site for four years though sharing professional dialogue with teachers and educators and entering into informal conversations with some of the students and their parents. My understandings focus on the potential and problematics of oft-used generic spelling programs and approaches for student cohorts marked by social, cultural and linguistic diversity. This article concludes by considering two possible extensions to the word study approach that may have utility for working with middle years students from diverse backgrounds: creating a discursive ‘Third Space’ that overtly recognises students’ language experiences and the technique of colour blocking to create a visual stress

Connecting communities - Contextualising literacies

Over time, the Meanjin local council of ALEA, has been running a series of Key Teacher inservice days for teachers in the Brisbane and Ipswich area, and more recently further north in Yandina for Sunshine Coast teachers. Teachers who are ALEA members or whose schools are institutional members are able to attend up to three of these inservice days each year for a nominal cost. In the first part of this article Beryl Exley reviews the sessions presented on Friday 17 October, 2003 at Ipswich, a region mentored by ALEA Queensland State President, Nikki King. The sessions all dealt with the theme of connecting communities and contextualising literacies. In the second part Sandra Wright, a key teacher at Hatton Vale State School, details the experiences of her school’s attempt to connect with its community and to contextualise children’s multiple literacies

Catholic Teachers’ Postgraduate Qualifications and Students’ End of Schooling Outcomes: A Large Scale Queensland Based Comparative Study

Abstract A key feature of the current era of Australian schooling is the dominance of publically available student, school and teacher performance data. Our paper examines the intersection of data on teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes in 26 Catholic Systemic Secondary Schools and 18 Catholic Independent Secondary Schools throughout the State of Queensland. We introduce and justify taking up a new socially-just measurement model of students’ end of schooling outcomes, called the ‘Tracking and Academic Management Index’, otherwise known as ‘TAMI’. Additional analysis is focused on the outcomes of top-end students vis-à-vis all students who are encouraged to remain in institutionalised education of one form or another for the two final years of senior secondary schooling. These findings of the correlations between Catholic teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes are also compared with teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes across 174 Queensland Government Secondary Schools and 58 Queensland Independent Secondary Schools from the same data collection period. The findings raise important questions about the transference of teachers’ postgraduate qualifications for progressing students’ end of schooling outcomes as well as the performance of Queensland Catholic Systemic Secondary Schools and Queensland Catholic Independent Secondary Schools during a particular era of education

Teachers' accounts of their curriculum use: external contextual influences during times of curriculum reform

Curriculum reform is often described as being dependent on teachers’ advancement of reform principles. Many studies report the reasons for whether teachers engage with a new curriculum, and these reasons have focused on internal, personal influences including disconnections between curriculum and teachers’ beliefs and practices. This study investigates nine Australian primary teachers’ accounts of their use of a new English curriculum from data obtained through semi-structured interviews. A thematic content analysis approach was used to analyse the interview transcripts, illustrating significant differences among the teachers in their use of the intended curriculum. The analysis provided four distinct influences on their curriculum use: the provision of professional development; curriculum and leadership roles; use of alternative or additional materials; and schools’ prioritisation of particular learning areas. The findings demonstrate that the consistent use of these curriculum materials, as intended by designers, was appreciably influenced by factors external to the teachers. Implications for curriculum designers include the need for greater consideration of external contextual influences, such as: opportunities for teachers to access professional development, consideration of curriculum roles within schools, the thoughtful provision of additional or alternate curriculum materials, and recognition of the prioritisation of particular learning areas by schools

Using an online social media space to engage parents in student learning in the early-years: Enablers and impediments

Unprecedented changes to family life in the new millennium have left many parents feeling unable to effectively participate in their child’s school-based learning. This article presents research which explored enablers and impediments when using social media as part of an inquiry curriculum to promote parent engagement in student learning in one Australian school. Using collaborative inquiry research, various data were collected from two early-years teachers, their students, and the students’ parents using surveys, a full-day meeting, online weekly meetings, interviews, and the social media digital platform of Seesaw. Rogoff’s three interrelated planes of sociocultural analysis – personal, interpersonal, and community – were used to examine participant interactions and their effects. The agency|structure dialectic provided a conceptual lens to further explain how the social media apparatus of Seesaw enabled learning and teaching. The findings showed that access to forms of language needed to contribute to online social media spaces drew attention to the importance of teachers having at the ready a substantive knowledge of inquiry. Implications for future research are discussed

Chapter 2 Sensory Literacies, the Body, and Digital Media

At the forefront of current digital literacy studies in education, this Handbook uniquely systematizes emerging interdisciplinary themes, new knowledge, and insightful theoretical contributions to the field. The chapter topics identified through academic conference networks, rigorous analysis, and database searches of trending themes are organized in five thematic sections: Digital Futures; Digital Diversity; Digital Lives; Digital Spaces; Digital Ethics. This essential guide to digital writing and literacies research, with transformational ideas for educational and professional practice, will enable researchers to position their studies in the field and to generate new themes of inquiry