Embracing critical gobbledygook: finding a place for critical literacy in the Australian Curriculum (English)

This project seeks to explore the complex relationship between Government policy and classroom practice, specifically through the lens of the Australian Curriculum (English), and how this relationship impacts the pedagogical decisions made by teachers. The project aims to determine the ways in which teachers consider critical literacy to be a factor in their pedagogical practice, and how the Australian Curriculum has shaped their responses to and implementation of critical and transformational literacy. This study utilises Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction (1990), particularly the conceptual tool of habitus, to explore the ways in which critical possibilities are enabled and/or disabled by the educational and policy fields in which teachers and learners are situated. Bent Flyvbjerg (2001) identifies a kind of moral-contextual understanding as central to the effective practice of social science and understanding expert activity. Accordingly, the project seeks to develop detailed understanding of teacher values and practice through case study. The study is structured as a series of semi-structured interviews with practising teachers, as well as a brief exploration of the policy background. The findings from these interviews were explored using the conceptual tools of Bourdieu, seeking to understand how teacher habitus interacts with the Australian Curriculum.