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Thanks to everyone who has completed a questionnaire on their learning or teaching experiences of Australian literature!  

We've had a good response so far, and I'm now down to the gritty task of transcribing your responses! As we had hoped, the questionnaires document a wide range of experiences in the Aust. lit. field, and we are looking forward to sharing them with you all in our project report, due out at the end of August.

If you haven't got around to completing the questionnaire yet -  there's still time! 

We can continue accepting new responses until mid/late July, when we'll begin finalising the report. So if you haven't yet shared your story with us, please follow the links on the right and send us your questionnaire.

 Just a reminder for any passing visitors to the TAL site... we do have a questionnaire for secondary teachers, and it is still open!

The questionnaire is a long one, and may take up to an hour to complete, but your perspective on this often contentious issue of Australian literature in secondary education is important to us, so we hope you'll complete the questionnaire and let us know your experiences, ideas and impressions of Australian literature in education.

Calling Aust. lit. Students!

If you have studied Aust. lit. at undergraduate level, we also have a questionnaire for you!  

We're keen to hear more of your experiences, ideas and impressions of undergrad Australian literature study, and we're offering a second UQP book-prize for entries submitted before the 5th June 2009.

Follow the links here to the questionnaire for your level of study.

Hoping to hear from you...

The TAL Team

Thanks to everyone who has responded to the various surveys the Teaching Aust. Lit. project has underway!

We greatly appreciate the support we've been receiving from out colleagues around the country.

If you are teaching Australian literature this semester, please ask your students to take the undergraduate survey too! Click here for the link!

Thanks

Kerry, Philip, Alice. and Anna

The TAL Team

Lucinda Kennedy was the lucky winner of $100 worth of UQP books in the TAL Survey’s Undergraduate Questionnaire Prize Draw for 2008.  In her prize pack of goodies, she received the following books:

Anna Bemrose: Robert Helpmann: A Servant of Art
Karen Foxlee: The Anatomy of Wings
Ruth Park: My Sister Sif
Fran De Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick (eds): Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour.
Elizabeth Hodgson: Skin Painting

Congratulations to Lucinda!

And a big thank you to everyone who participated in the TAL Survey Undergraduate Questionnaires.

The National Curriculum Board published its National English Curriculum Framing Paper in November 2008, and submissions were invited from various organisations by late February 2009. The Framing Paper is extensive in acknowledging the diverse needs of a national curriculum, but has drawn criticism from various teaching associations (such as the AATE) for its separation of the 3 'core elements' of English curriculum: 1. Language: Knowledge about English; 2. Literature: Informed appreciation of literature; 3. Literacy: Evolving repertoires of English usage. English Teachers' Associations such as the AATE have called for an integration of the 3 elements in the curriculum, as each inform the other.

Kerry, Alice,

I'm finding the AATE paper, from the 14-member Council, useful and interesting. It's framed as a detailed and positive response to the National Curriculum paper and makes some well-argued responses. I haven't finished it yet, but what emerges so far, in my reading, is the AATE's informed sense of where teachers are at in their thinking about the English curriculum and how to think about student experience in relation to these issues. I thought the point about some tendencies within the NCB's paper to 'deprofessionalise' English teachers was persuasive – not acknowledging and working with teachers' knowledge and experience of the history and practice of teaching English. The other point that stood out for me was the one about the tendency for such curriculum documents to position the student 'outside' knowledge' ... a point that I want to allude to in the ASAL paper I'm writing. I'll keep going .... interested in what you think.

Recently announced is the appointment of Associate Professor Philip Mead to the position of Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia.

UWA's Vice Chanellor, Professor Robson said the role of the Chair is to provide national and international leadership in the study and appreciation of Australia's creative writers and their work, taking Australian literature to national and international audiences.

"The importance of the Chair in shaping the future direction of teaching in literature, from schools to universities, should not be under-estimated," Professor Robson said.

It is an exciting appointment and one that is sure to impact upon the teaching of the works of Australian writers at that university and, hopefully, more widely.

Welcome to the Teaching Australian Literature Project Website.

The Teaching Australian Literature project is an ALTC funded project supported by AustLit - the Australian Literature Resource that is aiming to discover the extent and context of the teaching of Australian literature at home and abroad.

The investigation into the prominence and context of Australian literature teaching will lead us to the development of tools and services that will support the incorporation of Australian literary texts into the teaching at both the upper secondary and tertiary levels of educational practice.