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What do we see when we observe an excellent English lesson? What's going on in the room? Perhaps what stands out is a collaborative making of meanings inspired by stimulating texts. Perhaps what's most important is an ever-deepening knowledge about, and facility with, the many ways that language works. Maybe what we're seeing is a carefully sequenced preparation for future hurdles to be negotiated. Or a blend of all three. And perhaps, as this story suggests, there is more. Perhaps every English lesson is affected in all kinds of subtle and sometimes invisible ways by unconscious fears and desires and by half-remembered histories, the territory towards which a story – more easily than a piece of non-fiction – can gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a framework designed to explore the linguistic knowledge of primary and secondary English teachers as they used grammar ‘to think with’ (Halliday, 2002). Utilizing Halliday's distinction between usage (grammar) and theory (‘grammatics’), we draw on findings from a three-year study investigating the impact of systemic functional grammatics on teachers’ linguistic subject knowledge (LSK). The paper begins by reviewing limitations of current studies of grammar and shows how we translated Hallidayan concepts like metafunctions and stratification into a grammatics for narrative. It then explains a framework developed to analyze shifts in teachers’ LSK along three dimensions: approach to narrative, levels of language awareness and assessment stance. Drawing on interviews with 23 teachers before and after implementation of grammatics, we use the framework to describe shifts in LSK of two teachers. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of grammatics for exploring the multidimensional character of English teachers’ LSK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivation for Australian teachers of English to expand their expertise in grammar has been sharpened by the introduction of the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E), whose knowledge base is broad and multifaceted. Teachers at all levels are required to have a stronger linguistic subject knowledge which includes knowledge of the structures and functions of word and sentence-level grammar, as this relates to a wide range of texts in different modes. They also need to apply linguistic understandings in practical tasks of planning, teaching and assessment. The expanded nature of this subject content may have stretched teachers beyond their comfort zones and assessment is needed of the profession’s current levels of understanding of and confidence to teach language. This paper reports on a national survey of 373 English teachers who expressed their views on linguistic subject knowledge and linguistic pedagogic subject knowledge. It focuses on teachers’ views of the importance of grammatical knowledge, approaches to this, levels of confidence with language and professional learning needs. The quantitative and qualitative data offers a complex picture of Australian teachers’ beliefs and their preparedness to teach what the curriculum now demands of them from early to later years of schooling in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivation for Australian teachers of English to expand their expertise in grammar has been sharpened by the introduction of the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E), whose knowledge base is broad and multifaceted. Teachers at all levels are required to have a stronger linguistic subject knowledge which includes knowledge of the structures and functions of word and sentence-level grammar, as this relates to a wide range of texts in different modes. They also need to apply linguistic understandings in practical tasks of planning, teaching and assessment. The expanded nature of this subject content may have stretched teachers beyond their comfort zones and assessment is needed of the profession's current levels of understanding of and confidence to teach language. This paper reports on a national survey of 373 English teachers who expressed their views on linguistic subject knowledge and linguistic pedagogic subject knowledge. It focuses on teachers' views of the importance of grammatical knowledge, approaches to this, levels of confidence with language and professional learning needs. The quantitative and qualitative data offers a complex picture of Australian teachers' beliefs and their preparedness to teach what the curriculum now demands of them from early to later years of schooling in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst spelling is a feature of most primary classrooms, it is an aspect of literacy instruction that is more often tested than taught. Part of the problem is that many teachers work with limited resources and understandings of the English morpho-phonological language system and lack the confidence they need to operationalise this linguistic knowledge effectively in teaching. In this paper, we present findings from a doctoral study that aimed to improve the teaching of spelling through a linguistically informed toolkit based on powerful morpho-phonological awareness. Ten teachers were shown how to direct children’s attention to the meaningful structures within words (morphemes), how morphemes relate to sounds (phonemes) within words, and importantly, how morphemes connect words in meaningful ways. The results of teachers’ applying a relational approach to spelling in classroom interventions are revealing. Pre and post-testing of children revealed not only statistically significant improvements in children’s correct spelling, but in spelling approximations and verbal reasoning about these. Teachers also reported increased levels of knowledge and confidence in assisting children to relate meaningful parts of words (morphemes) to their sounds (phonemes). The implications have practical relevance for teachers and fruitful avenues for further research into children’s spelling development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst spelling is a feature of most primary classrooms, it is an aspect of literacy instruction that is more often tested than taught. Part of the problem is that many teachers work with limited resources and understandings of the English morpho-phonological language system and lack the confidence they need to operationalise this linguistic knowledge effectively in teaching. In this paper, we present findings from a doctoral study that aimed to improve the teaching of spelling through a linguistically informed toolkit based on powerful morpho-phonological awareness. Ten teachers were shown how to direct children's attention to the meaningful structures within words (morphemes), how morphemes relate to sounds (phonemes) within words, and importantly, how morphemes connect words in meaningful ways. The results of teachers' applying a relational approach to spelling in classroom interventions are revealing. Pre and post-testing of children revealed not only statistically significant improvements in children's correct spelling, but in spelling approximations and verbal reasoning about these. Teachers also reported increased levels of knowledge and confidence in assisting children to relate meaningful parts of words (morphemes) to their sounds (phonemes). The implications have practical relevance for teachers and fruitful avenues for further research into children's spelling development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian primary school teachers face two major challenges in their implementation of the national curriculum for English: literary study and multimodality. Whilst teachers and students frequently engage with texts like literary picture books, the requirement that teachers build children's understandings of texts as patterned, aesthetic constructs is new. And it is especially demanding for teachers without specialized training in either literature or multimodality. They must learn to manage the expanded 'reservoir' of meaning in school English and develop 'repertoires' of semiotic understanding in the course of full-time teaching (Bernstein, 2000). This paper emerges from a larger study that aimed to meet the challenge of literary study in English by introducing practicing teachers to a semiotic toolkit inspired by systemic functional grammatics. Grammatics, as Halliday (2002) interprets it, distinguishes the theory from the practice of grammar, the metalanguage from language in use. In our project, systemic functional grammatics included study not just of clause-level choices in language but their role in larger discourse frames and, via analogy, in images and multimodal texts. We made use of the 'resemblance' between focalization in print narratives and in bi-modal narratives picture books. Adapting semiotic principles like stratification and metafunction to national curriculum notions of 'levels of analysis' and 'threads of meaning', we used systemic functional (SF) theory to open up the potential of literature study for English teachers in NSW and Victoria, attempting to build understanding about the 'uses' of grammatics for a relatively uninformed group of 'users' (Martin et al., 2013). Because of the need to manage the theory-practice nexus in professional learning, we attempted to characterize 'knowledge about' images in narrative in accessible and systematic ways and to relate this to pedagogic 'know-how' in primary teaching and assessment of narrative. The paper introduces the analytical framework we developed to represent and develop knowledge and know-how in primary school literature study. It shows how we used the framework to benchmark teacher starting-points as they commented on students' responses to a picture book called The Great Bear by Armin Greder and Libby Gleeson (1999). It overviews input provided to teachers in workshops based on SF principles such as system, stratification and metafunctions. Finally, it overviews our initial findings based on our analysis of follow-up interviews with two teachers as they reflected on students' responses to The Tunnel, by Anthony Browne (1989). Changes are arrayed on clines produced to account for shifts in teacher knowledge and know-how. Early results of our project are very encouraging, providing evidence of significant if varied growth in teachers' orientations to narrative meaning and increased levels of meta-semiotic awareness. The paper concludes with reflections on the use of SF grammatics for meeting the challenges of literature study in primary school English in an era of multimodality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian primary school teachers face two major challenges in their implementation of the national curriculum for English: literary study and multimodality. Whilst teachers and students frequently engage with texts like literary picture books, the requirement that teachers build children’s understandings of texts as patterned, aesthetic constructs is new. And it is especially demanding for teachers without specialized training in either literature or multimodality. They must learn to manage the expanded ‘reservoir’ of meaning in school English and develop ‘repertoires’ of semiotic understanding in the course of fulltime teaching (Bernstein, 2000). This paper emerges from a larger study that aimed to meet the challenge of literary study in English by introducing practicing teachers to a semiotic toolkit inspired by systemic functional grammatics. Grammatics, as Halliday (2002) interprets it, distinguishes the theory from the practice of grammar, the metalanguage from language in use. In our project, systemic functional grammatics included study not just of clause-level choices in language but their role in larger discourse frames and, via analogy, in images and multimodal texts. We made use of the ‘resemblance’ between focalization in print narratives and in bi-modal narratives picture books. Adapting semiotic principles like stratification and metafunction to national curriculum notions of ‘levels of analysis’ and ‘threads of meaning’, we used systemic functional (SF) theory to open up the potential of literature study for English teachers in NSW and Victoria, attempting to build understanding about the ‘uses’ of grammatics for a relatively uninformed group of ‘users’ (Martin et al., 2013). Because of the need to manage the theory-practice nexus in professional learning, we attempted to characterize ‘knowledge about’ images in narrative in accessible and systematic ways and to relate this to pedagogic ‘know-how’ in primary teaching and assessment of narrative. The paper introduces the analytical framework we developed to represent and develop knowledge and know-how in primary school literature study. It shows how we used the framework to benchmark teacher starting-points as they commented on students’ responses to a picture book called The Great Bear by Armin Greder and Libby Gleeson (1999). It overviews input provided to teachers in workshops based on SF principles such as system, stratification and metafunctions. Finally, it overviews our initial findings based on our analysis of follow-up interviews with two teachers as they reflected on students’ responses to The Tunnel, by Anthony Browne (1989). Changes are arrayed on clines produced to account for shifts in teacher knowledge and know-how. Early results of our project are very encouraging, providing evidence of significant if varied growth in teachers’ orientations to narrative meaning and increased levels of meta-semiotic awareness. The paper concludes with reflections on the use of SF grammatics for meeting the challenges of literature study in primary school English in an era of multimodality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the dawn of a national curriculum for English in Australia, grammar has appeared without any serious interrogation of the terms of its re-entry and against ambiguous evidence about its value for teaching writing. What kinds of knowledge about language do teachers need in rhetorically productive teaching? This article investigates the potential of Halliday’s notion of grammatics for understanding students’ writing as acts of meaning in context. Drawing on systemic-functional linguistics, I show how teachers can assess writing achievement using ‘big picture’ tools like genre, register and ‘small picture’ tools like Expansion. I apply these tools to two student texts that call for attention to creative uses of language and to excursions and to difficulties with logic and coherence. The paper concludes that a ‘good enough’ grammatics will enable teachers to recognize playful developments in students’ texts and also to foster their control of literate discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A curriculum is a knowledge structure outlining what is to be learned in what order. The Australian curriculum for English emphasises creation of a 'coherent' and 'cumulative' 'body of knowledge about how the English language works', with learning that is 'portable and applicable to new settings across the school years and beyond' (National Curriculum Board, 2009, p. 9, emphasis added). But what happens when those charged with implementing curriculum cannot agree on 'what counts'? This article reflects on key differences between stakeholders about disciplinarity in English, drawing on sociological categories of Bernstein and Maton. The fourth challenge facing implementation is 'face validity'. The creation of a viable knowledge structure for English makes it crucial that teachers and professional bodies find it acceptable. The article concludes with a heuristic figure for representing key parameters of knowledge structure in English and a proposal for interrelating these so as to optimize implementation of the curriculum in Australian classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper considers the development of voicing in the writing of secondary English students influenced by post-structuralist approaches to literature. It investigates students’ growing capacity not only to voice their own responses to literature but also to relate these to a range of theoretical discourses. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, we explore the development of voicing in students’ writing in three key assessment tasks in a Queensland Literature Extension course. We argue that students’ growing capacities to handle the demands of reflexiveness in this course are manifested in their expanding repertoire of choices related to control of stance, orientation to reading, type of address and orders of voicing. By the end of their course in literary theory, students are producing texts that integrate personal and impersonal forms of voicing, exploiting the potential of projection for embedding and for complex iterations of voice and stancing their proposals in authoritative and independent ways. Drawing on extracts from representative student work from this course, we characterize these developments in voicing as a movement towards greater polyphony (or multivoicedness). Our analysis of the expanded repertoire of choices for voicing in students’ texts provides evidence of the power of a well-structured introduction to post-structuralism in senior school English. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In a complex communicational environment and at the dawn of an Australian curriculum, teachers need new kinds of knowledge about language (KAL). Our paper investigates the character of a ‘good enough’ KAL through ‘grammatics’—a metalanguage based on careful study of grammar—a way of thinking with grammar in mind. It identifies four challenges facing any grammatics that is going to be adequate to the discipline: (1) Building a coherent account of KAL for contemporary English; (2) Fashioning a rhetorical grammatics for improving students’ compositions; (3) Improving continuity and cumulative learning through the years of schooling; and (4) Developing a grammatics adequate to multimodal communication. Our paper draws on the resources of systemic functional grammatics to explore these challenges and considers the implications for teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a complex communicational environment and at the dawn of an Australian curriculum, teachers need new kinds of knowledge about language (KAL). Our paper investigates the character of a 'good enough' KAL through 'grammatics' - a metalanguage based on careful study of grammar - a way of thinking with grammar in mind. It identifies four challenges facing any grammatics that is going to be adequate to the discipline: (1) Building a coherent account of KAL for contemporary English; (2) Fashioning a rhetorical grammatics for improving students' compositions; (3) Improving continuity and cumulative learning through the years of schooling; and (4) Developing a grammatics adequate to multimodal communication. Our paper draws on the resources of systemic functional grammatics to explore these challenges and considers the implications for teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports on research into the literacies of pre-service teachers and the implications for both mapping and developing students’ literate competences. The research focussed on two questions: (i) If tertiary literacies are multiple, how do we bring these into relationship with one another and with the different discourse domains of professional life? (ii) What does development ‘look like’ in a multiliteracies environment? The research investigated the linguistic challenges of all assignments undertaken by 11 students in the first 18 months of teacher education and this paper considers how one student negotiated the challenges of three of these. Drawing on tools of register and genre within systemic functional linguistics, our paper explores the genesis of a model to encompass a wide range of assignment tasks related to academic, everyday and professional discourses of teacher education. Following this, it applies genre and register analysis to the writing produced by one student and reflects on the implications of her negotiation of these tasks. A dialogic model of development is proposed which images learning as an ability to shunt between the register demands of different domains. The student integrates sometimes competing meaning potentials through the production of a text in a particular genre. Development is construed in terms of this dialogue. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential of the framework for both including the diverse literacies of teacher education and for exploring the kinds of learning that occurs at the intersection of (often competing) discourses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper interrogates the diverse literacy practices of current curriculum in school English from the point of view of linguistic analysis of students' texts. In particular, it explores the semantic features of responses to an open question about an unseen narrative. Systemic functional analysis revealed three orientations to meaning, or 'three readings, immanent in students' responses at different levels of achievement in Year 10 examinations: a 'tactical reading' (in lower ranges of achievement), a 'mimetic reading' (in mid-ranges of achievement) and a 'symbolic reading' (amongst high range of achievement). The paper explores the implications of these differently valorised readings for contradictions between the diverse literacy practices of current curriculum and the hierarchies at work in formal assessment of such practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates examination English in Australia from the point of view of two analytical frameworks: Bernstein’s code theory and systemic functional linguistics. Linguistically it explores the semantic features of six responses to an open question about an unseen narrative in Year 10 examinations. Two responses at three achievement levels are described in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings and the overall orientation to narrative interpretation in each grade is related to a particular type of reading — tactical, (D or E grade), mimetic (C grade) and symbolic (A- grade). Capturing students’ orientations to meaning through text analysis is one aspect of the challenge. The other is explaining how some students appear to ‘recognize’ and ‘realize’ what the ‘open question’ requires of them in this context while others do not. The second half of the paper applies Bernstein’s code theory, particularly his notion of ‘recognition’ and ‘realization rules’ to the readings students make of the interpretive context. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the potential of this dual analysis (textual and contextual) for making success in school English both more visible for students currently disadvantaged by examination English and more tractable rhetorically in their production of successful responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles some of the analytical challenges of multisemiotic texts in the production of racist discourse in news stories. In particular, it offers a critical analysis of the 'children overboard' affair in Australian newspapers. This notorious incident, in which Liberal Party ministers wrongly claimed that asylum seekers threw their children overboard in an effort to coerce the Navy to offer them sanctuary, claimed front-page news for some time in Australian newspapers. The effects of the claims about 'boat people' are still being played out in political struggles over border protection in late 2003. Media treatment of the incident presents distinctive challenges for analysis in part because it is work at the borders of discourse that most powerfully shaped public perceptions of the issue. In this paper I adopt the notions of 'framing' (for images) and 'voicing' (for verbiage) to explore (re)presentations of the 'children overboard' story in two Australian newspaper articles. I also posit some telling homologies between voicing and framing at three stages of the unfolding media story. The paper argues that the politics of race are increasingly being played out by means of visual 'news' and that critical discourse analysts need ways of analyzing the synergies between visual and verbal representations of news makers and their effects on public discourse surrounding them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his introduction to the April 2003 special issue of the journal 'Text,' Martin posted some of the issues, which an evolving theory and practice of appraisal analysis needs to address. The speaker's attitudes and assessments, his judgments of validity and probability, his choice of speech function, the mode of exchange in dialogue, such things are not discrete elements that belong at some particular juncture but semantic features that inform continuous stretches of discourse. It is natural that they should be realized not segmentally but prosodically, by structures that are not particulate but field-like.

This article considers the role of APPRAISAL systems in narrative discourse from the point of view of writer/reader relations. (1)It aims to uncover some of the mechanisms by which narratives 'go to work' on readers - enabling them to 'feel with' particular characters and to adjudicate their behavior ethically. The data used in this study includes one short written narrative presented to sixteen-year-old Australian students in a formal English examination and two successful written responses to this. The first part of the article focuses on the semantic attributes of the three texts. The narrative, CLICK, and the responses form an intertextual set from which we can learn much about a narrative's addressivity and the kinds of uptake displayed in A-range readings. The successful responses (like others in the A-range corpus) embody a complex of attributes including an ability to read narrative texts relationally, a sensitivity to the hierarchy of voices and values played out in the text and attentiveness to both implicit and explicit forms of APPRAISAL. The second part of the article presents an analytical apparatus developed to linguistically model the development of empathy and discernment in ideal (and in this case, successful) readers as they read and respond to this narrative. Linguistic analysis focuses on how appraisal resources like AFFECT and JUDGMENT, their trends, their co-patterning and their transformation contribute to the creation of a text axiology in ideal readers. The article concludes by outlining some implications for analysis of evaluation in text if we take into account different conditioning environments for development of writer-reader relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assessment tools are typically generic for all forms of writing. • Teachers are uncertain of what growth looks like in writing. • Growth or development in writing is not neat and can be uneven. • A linguistically informed framework for narrative supports teacher assessment. Variable achievements are not only common in students' writing but pose challenges for teachers seeking to acknowledge these and foster next steps in literacy teaching. If teachers are to 'lead development' (Vygotsky, 1978), they need knowledge about how different text types function and what progression in learning to compose these looks like. Drawing on data from a large research project investigating the contribution of systemic functional grammatics to student writing, the paper considers the interplay of factors at work in student writing and what a linguistically informed approach to writing pedagogy offers teachers keen to foster development in primary classrooms. The paper addresses two key questions: (i) What kind of framework is needed if we are to take account of positive but embryonic developments in student writing? (ii) How can the framework be used by teachers to foster next steps in students' writing? It may be possible to change the story currently dominating assessment in an era of high-stakes international testing focused so strongly on measurement rather than growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]