Faculty of Education - Theses

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    Pedagogic possibilities of diasporic texts in a contemporary literature classroom: a postcolonial analysis
    Purcell, Mary Elizabeth ( 2020)
    Over recent decades, the demography of Australian classrooms has changed considerably. This is evident in the increased mobility, cultural diversity and transnational connectivity that students live and experience. However, the literature curriculum continues to maintain a focus on the English canon. It tends to ignore the diverse knowledges and literatures within the students’ cultural repertoire. This project, therefore, seeks to respond to this anomaly by examining the ways in which a text produced by an Australian-Asian diasporic writer has the potential to contribute to the development in students of ‘transnational literacy’ (Spivak, 1992). It investigates how diasporic texts might help contemporary students to negotiate their identities and understand their ‘worldliness’ (Said, 2003) in relational, critical and reflexive ways. Using a range of critical tools from recent postcolonial theory, this research is based on a pedagogic experiment. It involves the researcher teaching a postcolonial text to Year 11 students, observing student responses to the text, and interviewing them to generate data that is analysed through a constant movement between theory and data, privileging neither. This data suggests that, within the transnationalised and hybridised space of the contemporary Australian classroom, some students find difficulty negotiating the dominant norms of Australianness, and identify nation-centric narratives as key sources of feelings of confusion and exclusion. Yet, by the end of the course of study, after contesting these norms, the majority of these students reported changes in their epistemic constructions of themselves and of others. As they began to see themselves differently, they were becoming better prepared to imagine the Other who was pushing back at the self. Based on this insight, this thesis shows that the teaching of diaspora literature is a useful tool in steering students towards transnational literacy inasmuch as it highlights the ambiguities, ambivalences, and the hybridities that they experience and gives useful insights into how ‘reading otherwise’ is essential for its development. In conclusion, this thesis proposes a new form of literary pedagogy that takes into account contemporary social changes and recognises that they necessitate a new ethical receptiveness, a transnational sensibility that is disposed towards cultural difference. Achieving such recognition emerges from a deliberate process of slow reading and imaginative training to focus on often overlooked detail, and importantly involves privileged subjects showing awareness of their complicity within transnational hierarchies of power.
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    The holistic nature of literary knowledge : a perspective of authorial meaning and legitimate significance as a unique aesthetic experience
    Statton, Carl Anthony ( 1986)
    Literary knowledge represents the state of affairs in the holistic nature of literature. Within the scheme of co-ordinates that constitute the holistic nature of literature, legitimate aesthetic experience cannot occur unless a valid interpretation of meaning is considered as the probable intention of the author. Understanding meaning initiates legitimate aesthetic experience as opposed to an aesthetic awareness that inadvertently distorts authorial intention to satisfy wishfulfilment gratification of the audience. Validity in interpretation implies satisfying the conditions of knowledge, in that agreement in .judgements about literature is possible. Yet, though meaning may satisfy the conditions of objectivity, each legitimate aesthetic experience is peculiar to the individual's empathic relationship to the valid interpretation. . The significance of the text may be an ineffable aesthetic experience which is a self-evident form of knowledge. The synthesis of Hirsch's theory of 'meaning and 'significance' with Hirst's belief that literature is ? 'unique form of knowledge' gives a dual nature to, and foundation for, the epistemological status of literature. Consequently, there is justification for teaching literary knowledge in texts and procedural knowledge for construal of valid interpretation. Interpretation and criticism have different functions. One attempts to give coherence and objectivity to textual meaning, while criticism imbues a valid interpretation with a 'unique' knowledge that is relative to the dynamic of history and the dialectic of criticism. If students are to perceive in some degree the holistic nature of literary knowledge, then trainee teachers ought to be familiar with the synthesis of Hirsch and Hirst which is a primary principle both in the construal of textual meaning and in the attempt to express legitimate aesthetic experience.
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    The selection and role of literary texts in the ESL classroom
    Yeoh, Siew Im ( 1995)
    This study investigated five secondary teachers selection of literary texts and perception of the role literature plays in the ESL language classroom. The teachers were chosen from four schools in the Melbourne metropolitan area and were interviewed individually except for one school where two teachers were interviewed for the research. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed and formed the main body of data As supplementary data interviews were also conducted with ten students (one 'good student and one weak student chosen by each teacher). The case studies revealed that criteria for text selection were related to considerations for students needs features of the text the teachers preferences in reading practical issues related to the availability of text and examination requirements. The research confirmed the perceptions of writers on this area who have maintained that literature is often used as a context for generating language activities and for imparting knowledge about the target culture The data also found that literature was used to affirm the students own cultural identities.
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    Personal knowledge and the teaching of literature
    Beavis, Cathy ( 1981)
    The study explores the place of pupils' personal response in the teaching of literature. The same short story was taught by a different teacher to each of four year-eight classes. The classes were taped, the students' written work was collected and the teachers were interviewed about a number of issues relating to English teaching and the development of personal response. The teachers' comments and practice were juxtaposed against central tenets of Michael Polanyi's thought, with a view to identifying the degree to which his account of "personal knowledge" accorded with intuitive practice of good teachers. His ideas were found to have considerable relevance to the teaching of literature. In an effort to relate classroom strategies to pupils' personal responses, Roy Thomas' adaptation of Eisner's objectives, and his own notion of a "teaching point" were employed as a framework for comparison. While these tools of analysis proved ultimately inadequate in accounting for all the elements contributing to such engagement, they did make possible the identification of a number of important features of classroom practice. The study closes with some general observations about strategies, attitudes, values and beliefs, likely to result in a deeper awareness of the text and in a personal engagement with it.