Project progress
The project officially commenced in July 2016 and a Project Coordinator was appointed. The setting up phase of the project involved ethics submission and approval, initial literature review, and setting up project data management and communications processes.
The research team is currently undertaking data collection for the project. This includes:
- A national online survey of English teachers from all Australian states and territories and of all experience levels
- A longitudinal study of early career English teachers during years 1-4 of their English teaching. This will include interviews with these teachers about their emerging views of the relationship between literary knowledge and professional practice as these are mediated by social relationship in their school context
- Interviews with key stakeholders in the Literary Studies and English Education fields
- Consultation with experienced teachers
If you would like to contribute to data collection please see our get involved page.
Relevant publications
Required Reading: Literature in Australian Schools since 1945. Edited by Tim Dolin, Joanne Jones and Patricia Dowsett. Published 2017.
A number of the Chief Investigators of the Literary Knowledge project have chapters included in Required Reading: Literature in the Australian Schools since 1945. The chapters are:
- “Literature at school in NSW: Some Recent History” by Professor Wayne Sawyer
- “Changing the Subject: Text selection and curriculum development in VCE English 1990” by Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies and Professor Benton Doecke with Prue Gill and Terry Hayes
- “What the Dickens?: Exploring the role of canonical texts in mediating subject English in Australia” by Professor Susan K. Martin and Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies
Teaching Australian Literature: From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings. Edited by Brenton Doecke, Larissa McLean Davies and Philip Mead. Published 2011.
This volume, edited by project CI’s Brenton Doecke, Larissa McLean Davies and Philip Mead brings together teachers, teacher educators, creative writers and literary scholars in a joint inquiry that takes a fresh look at what it means to teach Australian literature. The immediate occasion for the publication of these essays is the implementation of The Australian Curriculum: English, which several contributors subject to critical scrutiny. In doing so, they question the way that literature teaching is currently being constructed by standards-based reforms, not only in Australia but elsewhere.
The essays assembled in this volume transcend the divisions that have sometimes marred debates about the place of Australian literature in the school curriculum. They all recognise the complexity of what secondary English teachers do in their efforts to engage young people in a rich and meaningful curriculum. They also highlight the need for both secondary and tertiary educators to cultivate an awareness of the cultural and intellectual traditions that mediate their professional practice and to encourage a critically responsive pedagogy.
