Reading as an imaginative act
- Authors: McGraw, Amanda , Mason, Mary
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: English in Australia Vol. 52, no. 2 (2017), p. 9-19
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The teaching of reading provokes heated discussion, particularly when the reputations of governments and institutions rest on what students do and achieve. This paper focuses on the first two years of a three year project where the researchers worked in communities of practice with secondary school English teachers in state, Catholic and independent schools in Victoria, Australia with a focus on examining and improving the teaching of reading. A starting point for practitioner inquiries was giving close attention to what students say about their reading experiences. Based on the students’ insight and a return to key theorists, we suggest that the process of reading in English is largely an imaginative act. Like the students, we argue for curriculum that is less ‘fenced in’ by limited notions of quality and more open to genuine learning. © 2017, AATE - Australian Association Teaching English. All rights reserved.
Reading in English classrooms : A developing culture of disenchantment
- Authors: McGraw, Amanda , Mason, Mary
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Changing English : Studies in Culture and Education Vol. 26, no. 2 (2019), p. 137-149
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- Reviewed:
- Description: Based on a three-year project conducted in Australian secondary schools, this paper captures a developing disenchantment with reading in and for subject English. As part of an extended professional learning experience for teachers, students and their English teachers were interviewed and students were asked to draw reading. Paying attention to the sensitivities both students and teachers express about classroom reading experiences and to the impact institutional culture has on what they do and feel, this paper identifies a developing culture of disenchantment that is veiled by recurring busy and technically oriented activity. We suggest that in a pervading culture of valuing what we measure, students regard reading at school as ‘work’, find it difficult to keep their minds on task and experience a loss of independence in thinking. Teachers, loath to take risks in a culture of compliance, also describe their disenchantment with current practices.