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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.

Contemporary views of literacy, and of English and Language Arts curriculum recognise the importance of digital culture and communication forms in many young people's lives and the multiple forms of literacy students engage with as they work, interact and play. Amongst these, videogames, whether played on PCs, laptops, wiis, or on mobile devices of various kinds stand out as highly popular, engaging and sophisticated emergent cultural forms. Drawing on research in Australian secondary schools over a number of years, this paper describes approaches to working with games in the English classroom, and presents a model for critical games literacy which entails thinking of games as both text and action. It describes the ways in which the model might be used for planning and teaching with and about games, stressing the active nature of games and play, and calling on understandings of literacy as design.

How to understand and argue for the nature and place of literary texts and experience in contemporary English curriculum has been and continues to be the subject of much debate. While literature as traditionally conceptualised remains an important presence in much English curriculum, the notion of what "literature" is, or what the category of "literary" texts and cultural forms might encompass, in a context where literacy is understood as multimodal and English and literacy curriculum addresses multimodal literacies accordingly, is less clear. This paper addresses two areas with respect to literature and literature teaching in the digital age: first, issues surrounding the ways in which national curriculum guidelines in England and Australia envisage the teaching of literature, in principle and in practice; and second, the challenges presented to print-based conceptions of literature and literature teaching within English by significantly broader conceptualisations of literature encompassing a range of aesthetic multimodal texts and forms. The kinds of insights, experience and understandings generated through the study and creation of literary and aesthetic texts in English, it is argued, are now needed more than ever. However, as literary experience becomes increasingly transmodal, how English seeks to manage media shift to encompass both print and digital forms remains a challenging issue.

In his paper in "English in Australia" in 2002, Bill Green called for a literacy project of our own, and for the need to think again, and think newly about the place of literary literacy within contemporary curriculum. But what does literary literacy mean in curriculum that recognises a wide diversity of texts and literacies? If literature and close attention to the aesthetic and imaginative dimensions remain important, what kinds of texts should we value, and how should we attend to them? This article considers how such matters might be taken up with multimodal texts of different kinds.

Presents a selected bibliography of research in the teaching of English published between July and December of 2002. Addresses topics including bilingual/foreign language education, discourse processes, literacy, professional development, reading, technology and literacy, and writing. (SG)

Discusses history as a way of rereading English in an attempt to reach a more complex understanding of what literacy and English teaching are. Explores the ways in which English teachers' background shaped not just their views on the subject but also their classroom practice, their stance toward new subjects, and their subjectivity as teachers immersed in and produced by particular configurations of what literature should be. (PM)

Presents annotations of 37 selected recent research in the teaching of English and related fields. Addresses bilingual/foreign language education, discourse processes, literacy, professional development, reading, teaching and learning of literature, teaching and learning of writing, and technology and literacy. Notes that most of the studies appeared during the six-month period from July through December 2001. (SG)

Explores complex relationships between teachers (in Victoria, Australia) and curriculum change. Explores ways in which the teachers' positioning within a mix of discourses and settings variously supported or undermined their preparedness to accept new configurations of the subject Literature as well as the implications of curriculum change not just for constructions of the subject but also for teacher subjectivity. (SG)