Description
As English teachers experience increased pressures from a global reform agenda, their professional autonomy and pedagogical creativity are constrained. This research presentation draws on in-depth interviews with a small sample of NSW English teachers who shared how they negotiate various constraints to create engaging classroom possibilities for their students. The teachers described the opportunities and spaces they facilitate in their classrooms that open up new worlds for their students’ personal exploration, learning and development. Student cultural and linguistic diversity, engagement and inclusion, and the importance of forming an individual voice jostle against educational priorities of national benchmarks and limiting metrics. While the teachers acknowledged professional and practical influences often limit their work in Secondary English, the accounts of their classroom practices demonstrated significant professional agency and a capacity to reach beyond these identified boundaries. They recounted examples that mattered to them of their innovation and planning explaining thoughtful selections of wide ranging texts and purposeful resources that supported their students to go beyond the mundane and the merely functional. Within a context of challenge, they were committed to finding ways to liberate the subject, its students, and themselves so as to experience new possibilities that might be achieved through creating joyful emancipation in their classrooms.| Period | 11 Jul 2024 |
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| Event title | AATE/ALEA National Conference 2024: Your next chapter awaits with possibility aplenty |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Adelaide, Australia, South AustraliaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |