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Literature, the reading and study of texts, has for a century occupied a central place within subject English, as English itself has within schools. Yet recent years have seen a state of crisis, as cultural studies movements and ideological shifts have challenged and undermined long standing assumptions about the nature of literary study and the value of the subject in the curriculum. This study takes the instance of the specialist subject senior Literature as a case in point for exploring the processes of curriculum change. It considers the ways in which the subject was reread and reconstructed by teachers in the context of externally driven change, and the ways in which teachers felt they were required themselves to change.

The need for English and literacy curriculum to connect with young people's lifeworlds to build bridges and frames of reference that connect traditional English curriculum with digital texts and literacies, are increasing priorities in curriculum frameworks in Australia and elsewhere. This paper reports on a project in which the authors worked with teachers and students in five secondary schools to research the ways in which digital games might be incorporated into the English curriculum. Central to this endeavour was 'turning around' to the affordances of digital games and their paratexts to understand how they can be understood as text and action. Drawing on classroom observations and literature in Games Studies and English curriculum we present a timely model and innovative heuristic that we argue facilitates teachers incorporating digital games into their English classrooms. We illustrate how each assists teachers in 'turning around' to digital games to make their English classrooms more relevant to students' lifeworlds.

Literacy remains one of the central goals of schooling, but the ways in which it is understood are changing. The growth of the networked society, and the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), has brought about significant changes to traditional forms of literacy. Older, print based forms now take their place alongside a mix of newer multi-modal forms, where a wide range of elements such as image, sound, movement, light, colour and interactivity often supplant the printed word and contribute to the ways in which meaning is made. For young people to be fully literate in the twenty-first century, they need to have clear understandings about the ways in which these forms of literacy combine to persuade, present a point of view, argue a case or win the viewers’ sympathies. They need to know how to use them themselves, and to be aware of the ways in which others use them. They need to understand how digital texts organise and prioritise knowledge and information, and to recognise and be critically informed about the global context in which this occurs. That is, to be effective members of society, students need to become critical and capable users of both print and multimodal literacy, and be able to bring informed and analytic perspectives to bear on all texts, both print and digital, that they encounter in everyday life.\ud \ud This is part of schools’ larger challenge to build robust connections between school and the world beyond, to meet the needs of all students, and to counter problems of alienation and marginalisation, particularly amongst students in the middle years. This means finding ways to be relevant and useful for all students, and to provide them with the skills and knowledge they will need in the ICT-based world of the Twentyfirst century. With respect to literacy education, engagement and technology, we urgently need more information as to how this might be best achieved.

2005