Dissolving the Dichotomies Between Online and Campus-Based Teaching: a Collective Response to The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Bayne et al. 2020)

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

Digital writing in the new literacies age: Insights from an online writing community

Young people write themselves into being through online forms of expression characterised by literate digital practices. This paper focuses on the characteristics of writing in authentic digital spaces. It begins by introducing new understandings about writing, summarising the research literature associated with new literacies and the impact of new technological ‘stuff ’ and new ethos ‘stuff ’ (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). An analysis of writing practices from one online community, typical of the digital sites frequented by middle years’ students, is then conducted, demonstrating how the literacy practices enacted by its members reflect many of the salient shifts in writing that Merchant (2007) argues characterise digital literacy. The distinctive features of these forms of expression compel literacy and English teachers to reconsider what constitutes the writing classroom so that relevance is promoted within contemporary communicative contexts

“It’s got that power over you”: Negotiating Projective Identities in the English Classroom

This paper explores the learning affordances associated with Gee’s notion of the projective identity principle. A case study introducing game-as-text into the English classroom is used to explore how the relationship between virtual and real-world identities is mediated by student habitus, game design, and classroom pedagogy

A Report on Trends in Senior English Text-lists

The purpose of this project is to investigate text-list trends in the Senior Victorian English curriculum between 2010 and 2019. It involves the collation and analysis of 360 texts according to a range of factors, including: text-type, setting, protagonist, themes, and author. It addresses the research question: What are the trends in VCE English text lists between 2010 and 2019? The project addresses the implications of these trends, and advocates for greater diversity when it comes to discussions about which texts should be included in the senior English curriculum

What counts? Inclusion and diversity in the senior English curriculum

This paper reports findings from a research project investigating text lists in the Senior Victorian English curriculum between 2010 and 2019. Policy documents emphasise the need for the English curriculum to foster values of inclusivity and diversity of culture and for texts that reflect these values in constructive and affirmative senses. In order to test the extent to which text lists associated with subject English address these ambitions, a content analysis of three hundred and sixty texts was conducted, guided by the question: to what extent do the VCE English text lists between 2010 and 2019 meet policy objectives? Focusing on findings related to text type, story setting, sex/sexuality and Indigenous themes, we found that while some goals of policy documents were met, the lists show significant shortfalls in meeting objectives for Asia-literacy, literature by Indigenous Australians and diversity in text type, especially in the marked lack of digital and non-traditional texts

Shifting landscapes of digital literacy

This paper explores how changing digital literacy practices in educational contexts require that we continually revisit conceptualisations of digital literacy education. We begin by analysing the positions taken by stakeholders who contribute to digital literacy discourses in Australia, exploring how competing interests produce effects which manifest in ways that differently consecrate social and cultural practice in the digital age. We advocate the need for pedagogic frameworks that support digital literacy education. Existing approaches tend to privilege the operationalisation of digital technology. By contrast, teaching is needed which focusses on meaning-making and creating. However, the ‘datafication of everyday life’ (Barassi, 2018, p.170) has included extraordinary interventions into schooling that have significant implications for teachers and students. We argue that preparing young people for digital citizenship must include a focus on critical digital literacies that are responsive to contemporary digital forces (e.g. platformatisation, artificial intelligence, edu-apps, algorithms) as well as those digital technologies that are yet to make their way into formal schooling