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First Nations languages can play a significant role in ensuring connection to land, culture, Songlines, kinship, history, and stories. Ongoing language attrition for First Nations peoples of Australia has been due to colonization and past adverse government policies, which rendered First Nations languages a threat to the expansion of the colony. Through processes of dislocation from country and punishment for speaking language, many First Nations peoples began to lose their languages and were forcefully compelled to speak the English language on missions and reserves. Promoting First Nations languages in early educational contexts can instill a sense of cultural identity and connectedness to schooling for First Nations children, helping to ensure that languages are passed on to future generations. In many parts of Australia, First Nations languages are being revitalized and are being taught to both First Nations children and non-Indigenous children in early learning centers and in classrooms. This paper draws upon existing literature, briefly examining the removal of First Nations languages in Queensland from a historical perspective. The authors consider three essential elements required to work with First Nations communities when revitalizing First Nations languages and implementing a successful language program into schools: co-design, authentic delivery, and cultural inclusivity. We demonstrate how these elements have been used in the revitalization of First Nations languages in two Queensland schools. Finally, the importance of using an Indigenous centered approach to maintain languages at a local level is posited as a critical step in creating culturally inclusive environments for First Nations children in mainstream school settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the place of plurilingualism in Language and Literacy Education. The article problematises English-only, monolingual-centric assumptions upon which much of Australia's current literacy education policy discourse has been based, to instead advance pluriliteracies as an alternate, more generative lens through which to view literacy learners, literacy learning, and literacy capabilities. The paper begins with tensions inherent in how policy "imagines" learners in Australian schools, and the problem of imposing English-only, monolingual-centric notions of literacy when multilingualism is increasingly more the norm than the exception in many mainstream Australian classrooms. We consider how a pluriliteracy perspective on literacy education offers a more appropriate approach to addressing learners' developmental literacy needs, with particular attention to students' identity and agency. Finally, we consider effective implementation of plurilingual approaches to language and learning, with a focus on the intersection of ideology, practice, and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senior secondary Literature courses in Australia all aim, to various extents, to develop students’ critical literacy skills. These aims share emphases on reading, reflecting and responding critically to texts, on critical analysis and critical ideas, and on forming interpretations informed by critical perspectives. Critical literacy is not assessed on its own; rather, it is assessed indirectly alongside other concepts and skills. The most common form of assessment in these courses is the extended response, while multiple choice (MCQ) tests appear to be uncommon. We contend that multiple-choice assessments offer the potential to assess critical literacy at least as well as essay responses, and they do so independently of writing skills. We define critical literacy as a complex reading process involving challenging and resisting dominant representations in texts, foregrounding power relationships and acknowledging the multiple ways in which readers apply critical understandings to texts. This paper outlines the process by which two test developers researched and developed a small prototype test of critical literacy for senior school students that was aligned to senior secondary school Literature curricula. Cognitive laboratories were conducted in which these items were administered to a small number of students. The outcome suggests that the items were aligned to the construct and this assessment method shows promise in its capacity to measure students’ critical literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper furthers the understanding of literacy being developed through this Special Issue by bringing a pluralistic, complex account of literacy into conversation with assessment. The rise of neoliberalism in education--and its related focus on standards, accountability, and efficiency--has seen literacy positioned as the "core business" of contemporary education systems and, accordingly, a construct that must be rendered readily measurable, benchmarked, and accounted for. Through a critique of current literacy assessment practices in Australia relying on standardized testing to achieve such accountability using National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy and Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education as examples, we argue that the resulting dominant account of literacy is both reductive and deficient. On the one hand, we show how standardized literacy testing fails to recognize students' actual potential, in terms of the diverse and varied plurilingual and cultural meaning-making resources that many students now bring to literacy, beyond using Standard Australian English alone (and as a monolingual speaker would use SAE as an isolated language system). On the other, we show how standardized tests can render the assessment of literacy as effectively meaningless, given difficulties discriminating between test-takers' full range of literacy skills in meaningful ways. We conclude by considering alternative practices with potential to more accurately assess learners' literacy capabilities from a plurilingual perspective, and implications for education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairy tales are ubiquitous in Australian primary schools. Drawing on a review of key literature, this paper aims to determine the implications of teaching fairy tales in the twenty-first-century primary classroom. Research points to the benefits of including fairy tales as a tool to improve all subject areas of the curriculum. Fairy tales present opportunities to positively engage students through the teaching of social justice and the development of emotional intelligence. The review of literature found that teachers need to be cautious and critical when teaching traditional fairy tales which often perpetrate an outdated, gender-ignorant representation of society, and allow students an opportunity to confront these ideas. The book form of Disney fairy tales can be problematic, particularly the earlier versions, which are criticised for being domesticated, sentimental and overly simplistic. The review has also found that multicultural fairy tales have enormous potential to increase cultural equity in the contemporary classroom, but unfortunately, they do not appear to be easily accessible in Australia. The fairy tale is constantly being reinvented and reimagined to fit into modern society, which has led to the emergence of the fractured fairy tale genre, where a traditional fairy tale is subverted. This review found that when used in a critical and inclusive manner, fairy tales have the potential to be an effective resource to teach primary school students in the contemporary classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education systems around the world have moved to develop literacy progressions that describe a sequence of development in oral language (talking and listening), reading/viewing and writing. In Australia, the National Literacy Learning Progression (ACARA, 2021) is designed to support students' literacy development across the years of primary and secondary school. Common arguments for the use of such descriptions include the need to provide extra detail to official English syllabuses, and to inform teachers' pedagogical choices of the next logical focus for teaching. However, while it is understandable that teachers want to identify their students' needs and to plan for their development, there is slim evidence for common and systematic progression through stages of literacy development for all students. In this paper we report on a review of the literature into literacy development (Weekes, forthcoming) pointing out the gaps and discontinuities in the existing research as well as demonstrating the highly contextualised nature of literacy growth. We argue such factors pose significant challenges for policy and curriculum writers charged with responsibility for producing literacy progressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past eight years, Australian school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have engaged in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) writing test, with a one-in-two chance they will be tasked with producing a ‘narrative’ genre. This paper examines the way in which the very notion of storytelling and narrative is conceptualised in the NAPLAN supporting documentation, and its potential negative consequences. The paper begins by providing a review of the literature on storytelling, paying particular attention to research which has established the ‘Complication- Resolution’ narrative as one type of storytelling. It then provides an account of how story and narrative are typically characterised and defined in the official NAPLAN documentation, that is, as the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative exclusively. The final section of the paper presents a genre analysis of eight student writing samples and the related comments and gradings from the NAPLAN narrative marking guide. The analysis found a number of student texts in the marking guide that were effectively structured stories, but which had been marked down for Text Structure because they did not comply with the specific structure of the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative. The analysis also found a number of texts that scored highly with respect to the Text Structure criterion, even though they were not instances of the Complication-Resolution narrative sub-type. Drawing on these findings, the paper argues that various inconsistencies and points of apparent confusion in these comments and gradings can be taken as evidence that other sub-types of storytelling are being inappropriately devalued, and that ultimately, there is a lack of understanding in the nature of storytelling in the NAPLAN documentation. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on some of the negative consequences that may flow from storytelling being defined in this limited way, including the implications for how storytelling is taught by teachers and caregivers, the potential misdirection of students as to what constitutes a ‘good’ story, as well as the cultural implications of limiting stories to one specific type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The student category of ‘at risk’ is often assigned to learners who are considered by teachers and school administrators to not meet specified curriculum and assessment requirements. It is a pervasive term that manages to go unquestioned. Being ‘at risk’ implies being out of alignment with opposite terms, that is terms such as stability, safety, not at risk. This way of thinking can lead to an assumption that there is a fixed, normal position for learners, and that being other than that involves becoming ‘risky’. This paper questions the very idea that such a binary exists and explores the ways teachers talk about learners who are considered to be ‘at risk’ within the schooling system. We also argue that teachers’ talk about such learners and their ‘at riskness’ can constitute learners in ways that are either more constraining or more enabling to their pathways through schooling. The paper draws on our experience of analysing teacher interview data collected across a variety of research projects with teachers in Australian schools. Employing discourse analysis focusing on the discursive element of time as we trace temporal markers in teacher interview talk, we provide specific analysis of one teacher’s talk about her English language learners on their path to also becoming literate in English. Her talk demonstrates an optimistic and generative discursive position that challenges views of English language learners as ‘wanting’ and potentially as ‘at risk’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of teacher-child dialogue in facilitating young children's language learning is well established in the research literature, with significant outcomes accrued from rich language use in the classroom (Shiel, Cregan, McGough & Archer, 2012). This study focuses on the opportunities teachers provide to engage children in talk during small group teaching sessions and considers teacher-child talk patterns, within and across preschool and school settings. The intention was to examine teacher talk behaviours that facilitate children's language use and explore how teachers support children's oral language development as they move from preschool to school. Teachers from a preschool and school setting serving children from a low socioeconomic region of outer western Melbourne in Victoria, Australia were invited to plan, implement, and record teaching interactions with small groups of children that specifically built on their oral language skills. This paper reports on the fine-grained analysis of the teacher-child talk patterns in two specific ways: (1) teachers' talk behaviours, to review the discourse patterns used to foster young children's language learning; and (2) the children's responses, to ascertain the dialogic interplay that created opportunities for children's talk and learning. The findings indicate that during talk where teachers were supporting children's oral language, the teachers' preference for closed questions that were directed toward the immediate stimuli resulted in limited responses from the children. This particular teacher-child talk pattern was dominant in both preschool and school settings. While the common teacher talk behaviours across both settings support the continuity of children's learning, as they transition from preschool to school, there was little evidence of interactions that engaged children in rich dialogue to extend their oral language competencies. These results suggest that expanding teachers' repertoire of talk practices to involve children in a wide range of oral language experiences that draw on children's understandings and are associated with building knowledge, provides a foundation for engagement in children's language use and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes visible particular persuasive language choices made by the highest scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test. Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on toys and games. The paper explores how the use of nominalisation differed across the primary and secondary school years and draws links to the Australian Curriculum: English which introduces the nominalisation in Year 8. Recommendations are made for primary and secondary school teachers who wish to equip students with the language resources to deal with the demands of NAPLAN testing, but also to write persuasively in more authentic educational and social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much the same way that a squirrel stores a range of food in a range of places, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority's (ACARA) Australian Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2015) stores references to grammar in a range of places. This paper explores some seemingly 'hidden' grammars within the AC:E to (re)discover their genesis and how they unfold across Foundation to Year 6. The first 'Secret Squirrel' moment centres on the introduction of a new grammar which weaves traditional Latin-based and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory. The second 'Secret Squirrel' moment centres on the use of one sub-system of SFL Theory, the System of Appraisal, and its potential to provide an analytical lens for 'reading' the interpersonal meaning within narratives. The remainder of the paper draws on Goodson's (1990) notion of curriculum as a social construction, paying attention to the levels of processes and (potential) practice. This part of the paper focuses on the System of Appraisal as it is introduced in the AC:E and then translates the Content Descriptions to an example analysis. One stimulus text, Melanie Watt's (2012) children's picture book 'Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach', is introduced then analysed using the System of Appraisal as an analytical lens for identifying how language choices 'go to work' (Macken-Horarik, 2003, p. 285) on readers, that is how Watt's language choices are crafted so a 'compliant' child reader (Martin & White, 2005, p. 62) has the opportunity to 'feel with' and thus 'adjudicate' the behaviour of characters in particular ways (Macken-Horarik, 2003, p. 285). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competence in literacy skills has long been associated with educational (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw & Rycik, 1999; Sullivan & Brown, 2015), vocational (Kirsch et al., 2002; Zasacka, 2014) and social achievement (Wilhelm, 2016). Since research indicates that reading as a recreational pursuit improves students' outcomes on a range of literacy measures, supporting adolescent reading in an age of personal media is a key issue for policy makers in fields as diverse as education, library science, youth programming and arts policy. In order to be effective advocates of reading in this digital era, these diverse stakeholders need to remain abreast of adolescents' reading engagement frequency, and factors influencing this engagement in a dynamic educational and social environment. As such, this paper seeks to provide insight into how age, gender, place of residency and maternal education may potentially influence adolescents' intensity of engagement in the literacy-supportive practice of recreational book reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of the practicum learning experiences of thirty students of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) enrolled in a Masters of TESOL Education at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on current thinking about the role of reflective practice in teacher education, the value of real world learning beyond the classroom and the pedagogical affordances of the practicum, the enquiry aims to identify the types of practitioner learning that occur during practicum placements in terms of enhancing learners' knowledge and skills, increasing their self-reliance and self-confidence and contributing to their growth as educators and individuals, their professional and social identities. Utilising reflective surveys from a portfolio of authentic practicum documents as data, the researchers create thematic narratives of 'being and becoming' which foreground the salient themes. Hence, we demonstrate how the practicum develops participant practice teachers' realisations of their emerging agency as practitioners, makes manifest their perceptions of their increased professional confidence and then serves to indicate the pedagogical value of applying theoretical learning from the classroom to their professional practice. These results suggest the importance of preparing teachers for discovery, both the usual and the unexpected, in the process of planning, implementing and evidencing practicum work, and emphasise the importance of being and becoming to the practicum's work of embodied learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks to the past, to the watershed of Australia’s first National Literacy Plan (Australian Education Council, 1994) and National Numeracy Plan (Australian Education Council, 1994); to the present (reported National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data and evidence about literacy gains), and forward, to possible futures for young people’s literacy education and the prospective experience of literacy testing in Australia. The discussion situates NAPLAN in its historical context, recognising how it emerged from different approaches to state based testing of literacy and numeracy. Against this background we examine the 2015 NAPLAN writing data to reveal increasing numbers of students who are achieving below the national minimum standard in the domain of writing. Finally we call for a sharpened focus on writing standards as benchmarks in NAPLAN and how these relate to achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum. We also argue for an increased emphasis on teachers’ criterial knowledge, essential for the teaching and assessment of writing. Such moves would go some way to realising the potential of NAPLAN for evidence informed policy for achieving real educational improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a language-based model of direct instruction known as text-based, or genre, pedagogy, customised in collaboration with English teachers in four Australian secondary schools to teach creative writing in Years 7 and 8 classrooms. A distinctive feature of this pedagogy is a shared metalanguage used to make visible to students the literacy demands of specialised discourse, in this case, the specialised discourse of creative writing. We demonstrate the use of the metalanguage at four different levels of language, in order to build visible bridges from more general patterns of language use, in this case, the generic structure of narrative, to specific grammatical patterns that require more specialised terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing literacy demands of senior secondary studies have been noted by government agencies and scholars both in Australia and overseas. Disciplinary differences in writing has similarly received attention, although much of the research in this area has focused on the junior school, or spanned the whole of the secondary context. Less research has been focused specifically on disciplinarity in the senior high school, or on differences within what may often be conceived as a single discipline, such as between writing in Modern and Ancient History. This paper investigates disciplinary difference in the context of senior secondary writing for Modern and Ancient History and the resulting demands on students. It focuses on the different ways that dialogism, or the negotiation of competing knowledge claims, is managed in each subject. The Systemic Functional Linguistic system of engagement is used in a discourse analysis of highly rated student writing to reveal how writers in the histories open up or close down spaces for other voices in their arguments. Analysis illustrates the ways that 'objective evaluation' is managed, illuminating one aspect of what is valued as appropriate argumentation and raising implications for the way that literacy pedagogy in the senior secondary subjects of Modern and Ancient History is understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Success in literacy is critical to effective learning outcomes for all children, however for many Indigenous students who move variously between their Indigenous languages, Aboriginal English, and Standard forms of English the teaching of language and literacy has heightened significance and requires distinct, concentrated attention. This paper will consider principles for practice that have been derived from the adaptation of teaching programs implemented to effectively support Indigenous students' (English) literacy learning. The three programs discussed: the Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a) for preschool children, the Literacy Acquisition for Pre-primary Students pilot program and Reading Recovery, a literacy intervention for students after one year of school. From the evidence presented, successful literacy outcomes for students can been related to engaging with and connecting to Indigenous communities and families, teachers' professional skills and knowledge, the provision of responsive teaching interventions and investment in well-researched proven programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a written version of the closing plenary at the 2014 AATE/ALEA conference, aNTicipating New Territories, in Darwin in July 2014. It begins by highlighting several major interrelated themes from the conference keynotes, papers and workshops that I attended. Each of these themes resonated strongly with me during the conference. Two potential and competing storylines and the potential direction each could take Australian literacy education are then sketched. The first storyline envisages a continued technical and highly prescriptive approach to literacy. The second advocates a more creative approach to literacy pedagogy and briefly describes two contemporary programs that embody this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The move towards a national curriculum in Australia has created a new urgency to consider the extent to which teachers can claim agency within their profession. Drawing on data from interview transcripts of a small scale participant centred research project involving secondary English teachers in a school in Melbourne, Australia, this paper explores an apparent contradiction in teachers' perceptions of their role in curriculum decision-making. The focus of the project was to investigate teachers' attitudes to the teaching of poetry in an attempt to explain why this genre of literature is now almost entirely absent from the senior secondary 'taught' curriculum in the Australian state of Victoria. On one hand, the teachers in this study express frustration that the looming introduction of a national curriculum - combined with an increased emphasis on standardised testing - seems set to reduce their agency; on the other, they entertain the possibility that children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and communities might be better served by a centrally set curriculum than has previously been recognised. We draw on Bernstein's theories to argue that an analysis of this apparent contradiction may lead to the development of more socially just pedagogical practices within the teaching profession and among teacher educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stage theories of spelling development have been widely accepted since their conceptualisation in the 1970s; but, converging evidence offers support for non-linear models of spelling development. Specifically, Triple Word Form Theory (TWFT) suggests that students are capable of drawing on and coordinating phonological, orthographic, and morphological skills from quite early in their spelling development. Assumptions about the nature of spelling development have important implications for the way spelling is taught; however, many existing assessment systems currently being applied by educators and systems have failed to consider non-linear perspectives of spelling development. This paper presents the Components of Spelling Test (CoST) as a new approach to spelling assessment. The test is a valid and reliable assessment tool informed by TWFT and developed through a method of analysis suggested by stage theorists. Data used to develop and test the CoST were drawn from students in Year 3 and Year 5 across four schools in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) (n=198). The results of the testing clearly demonstrated that the CoST can provide teachers and educational researchers with a means to validly and reliably identify individual differences in specific phonological, orthographic and morphological skills associated with spelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]