Secondary School English: Articulating the Tensions Between Subject Knowledge and Literature Teaching

• In Event: From the Local to the Global: Literature and Literary Knowledge in and Across Context(s)

Abstract

This paper draws on a four-year Australian Government funded research project (2016-2019 DP160101084) which is investigating the role of literary knowledge in the professional development and practices of English teachers. At a time when questions of powerful knowledge (Young 2013) dominate curriculum debates, this project positions teachers as experts and understands practice as central to knowledge building and mobilisation in secondary school English. Project findings suggest a productive way to advance the knowledge question in English (Green 2017) is to articulate the various tensions between knowledge and literature (rather than attempt to identify definitions and purposes), as it is these tensions that are enacted and negotiated in secondary English classrooms.

Authors

• Larissa Jane McLean Davies, University of Melbourne

• Wayne Sawyer, Western Sydney University

• Lyn Yates, University of Melbourne