Melbourne Graduate School of Education, in collaboration with The Stella Prize and The University of Melbourne Archive, invites applications for five Secondary School English Teachers to join us in the archive on a week-long literary research project from 6-10 May 2019. This professional development opportunity includes a scholarship for teaching relief for all teacher participants and the support of key academics in education and literary studies.
The project will:
- Value teachers as researchers and as public intellectuals engaging critically with literature in contemporary and historic contexts.
- Highlight contemporary Australian literary texts in tandem with Australian archives.
- Address diversity in literary representation around race, gender, LGBTQ+ authors/stories.
- Support English teachers with resources and time to research and design new units of work.
- Champion teachers as researchers who will publish their works and share resources with each other and the broader literary community.
Specifics:
- The project will provide casual relief for teachers for five days to enable them to be researchers at the University of Melbourne Archive.
- Teachers will work with chosen text from The Stella Prize (provided below) in conjunction with archival material and existing curricular texts.
- Teachers will complete a small research project and/or design a unit of work based on their time in the archive and with the texts.
- Teachers will be supported in their research by academics from the University of Melbourne, will share resources with each other, and be part of a resource ‘salon’ at the end of the week.
- Teachers will write an article in the months following the week in the archive for an educational journal, paper, or online outlet.
To apply to be part of the project interested teachers should write a 250-word proposal that includes:
- Background information about your history teaching English, your current school’s demographic, and why you want to be a teacher-researcher.
- A research question or theme you would like to explore during the week.
- Your choice of a book(s) from the Stella Prize list that you would like to focus on and your reasons for choosing it.
- Some ideas on how you imagine linking the book with other texts/the archive – or existing curricular materials.
- A hoped outcome from the week (i.e. a new unit of work, comparative analysis between archival material and books etc.)
- A commitment to writing an article (scholarly or in a newspaper) based on your week as teacher-researcher.
Submit to: lucy.buzacott@unimelb.edu.au by Monday 4 March 2019 to be considered. Decisions will be made based on the diversity in texts chosen, the quality of research proposals, and teachers’ capacity and willingness to participate in the program.
Questions about this opportunity can be directed to: Dr Lucy Buzacott at lucy.buzacott@unimelb.edu.a
Stella Prize Texts
Terra Nullis by Clare G. Coleman
Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven
Tracker by Alexis Wright
A Writing Life Garner by Bernadette Brennan
The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
The Strays by Emily Bitto
Laurinda by Alice Pung
Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy
Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey
The Golden Age by Joan London
Potential Melbourne University Archive Links
- Chris Wallace-Crabbe
- Germaine Greer
- Melbourne University Press archives
- Sisters Publishing
- Spinifex Journal
- Sugar & Snails Press Co-Operative Ltd
- Meanjin Archive
- Helen Garner Archive
- And much more…
