English Teaching: Practice and Critique

Volume 8, Number 3 (December 2009): Focus: English afloat on a digital sea


Co-editors: Catherine Beavis (School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University) and Kevin Leander (Department of Teaching and Learning, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University) and Julia Davies (School of Education, University of Sheffield)

Rationale:

In the 21st Century, new technologies, in particular interactive multimedia and the internet, challenge many aspects of our teaching practice and assumptions.  What counts as knowledge, what counts as literacy, the ways we teach, and even the relationships we form are coloured and reshaped by changing cultural and social practices, such as global commerce and ICTs. These issues, and the relationships between them, need to be considered anew. Two current frames of reference for thinking about these changes and their implications for subject English are the notion of an "information revolution" (Castells 1996) and the changing nature of literacy, with its shift towards multiliteracies, or thinking of literacy as design (New London Group, 2000).  Both frames have significant implications for how we conceptualise English curriculum (for example, literacy, texts and assessment), for how we re-imagine English teaching, and for the ways in which we ask students to work with and within digital culture and new media.

English and literacy educators have gained much in recent years from exploring students' out-of-school uses of digital literacies, texts and technologies, but to what extent are insights gained from research in these areas incorporated into contemporary curriculum? What should constitute English in the digital age? What is or should be subject to change in curriculum and pedagogy? What might the relationships be between traditional literacies and curriculum and newly developing digital literacies and curriculum? The juxtaposition of digital texts and literacies with traditional forms of schooled English raises other questions across many areas:

  • How are practices with English changing in the digital age?
  • Should/how should English address new textual forms and digital culture(s)? What are the implications of doing so for how English is conceived and the role it takes in the curriculum? How/how should English incorporate the study of the texts of digital culture alongside older forms?
  • How are students' expectations and understandings of what constitutes texts, what constitutes literacy, and the relationships that obtain between texts and readers/viewers/players shaped by their engagement in the digital world? How are their understandings, orientations and expectations about writing and making similarly shaped by engagement here?
  • What are the implications of not engaging with digital texts and cultures, and retaining only traditional print/verbally based forms?
  • What can be learned from young people's engagement with digital texts and literacies out of school for the teaching of traditional forms of English?
  • What do the affordances of new and traditional forms each offer and make possible? What are the characteristics and strengths of the new and the traditional, and are there ways to capitalise on or integrate the strengths of both?
  • How are current frameworks of new literacy adequate and inadequate for understanding the use of digital practices and cultures in school?
  • What constraints and problems does the introduction of digital practices and culture run up against in contemporary schooling?
  • (How) is the introduction of digital practices changing school social practices or school culture?
  • What should remain central to English and how might that be constituted?
  • How is assessment challenged by multimodality and design?

The articles in this issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique address a range of the above issues which were posed by the guest editors in their original rationale.

References

Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. London, Blackwell.
New London Group (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope & M. Kalanatzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Melbourne: Macmillan.

The Editorial Board expresses its gratitude to the the guest editors of this issue and also to the following (some are members of the Review Board) who have helped with the review process: Catherine Beavis (Griffith University), Julia Davies (University of Sheffield), Kevin Leander (Vanderbilt University), Sue Brindley (Cambridge University), Karen Moni (University of Queensland), Kristina Love (University of Melbourne), Patricia Henry (Deakin University), Elaine Millard (Birmingham City University), Tara Alvey (Vanderbilt University), Xiqiao Wang (Vanderbilt University), Nathan Phillips (Vanderbilt University), Bridget Dalton (Vanderbilt University), Terry Locke (University of Waikato)

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