Larissa Mclean Davies
Biographic Data
| ID | 759915 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Larissa Mclean Davies |
| GIVEN NAMES | Larissa Mclean |
| FAMILY NAME | Davies |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIES L M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6963-2474 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Resistance, Reform, and Reimagination
In settler colonial contexts, education remains entangled with the imperial project. Grappling with the work of reconciliation and redress, education authorities have begun rewriting curricula to respond to the colonial inheritance in subject English. In this paper, we read three official secondary English curricula – from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Ontario, Canada – asking how each has responded to coloniality. Across these documents w…
Colonial taxonomies
In this paper we bring British and Australian perspectives together to question the non-fiction/fiction binary that we see in English classrooms, and to consider the liminal nature of some texts. In doing so we argue for the troubling of a hierarchy in the English classroom that draws on colonial histories of the subject to perpetuate the notion that fiction is the ultimate means through which students can understand the subject, its intentions, …
Unsettling subject English in the twenty‐first century
This paper uses examples from Australia and England to explore subject English with regard to the multiple metaphors inherent in the terms ‘settling’ and ‘unsettling’. In doing so we are concerned with imagining a future for a subject English curriculum which dislodges it from its imperial, colonial roots. In the first instance, we outline the existing approaches to unsettling English in England and Australia and the challenges and limitations of…
Reading climate
This paper outlines the emergent findings and theoretical foundations of Reading Climate: Indigenous literatures, English and Sustainable Futures, cross disciplinary research in Indigenous Studies, Education, and Literary Studies. Our team investigates epistemologies for the teaching of secondary subject English and tertiary courses and how they might be productively reworked. We draw on ‘Indigenous relationality’ as proposed by Mary Graham, Elde…
The ongoing crises facing teacher education
In 2022, after two years of the COVID virus profoundly interrupting social connection, learning, work and human mobility, governments worldwide turned material and rhetorical attention to life ‘post-pandemic’. Understandably, teachers who were central in keeping communities virtually connected during the pandemic—are positioned as core to a return to the quality of life and to gaining social futures beyond COVID-19. This is reflected in the theme…
Consent and literary education
Exploring issues of quality and equity through literacy learning in the time of Covid
It is well established that literacy as a social practice is fundamental to supporting and facilitating student learning across the years of schooling, and research has shown the importance of all teachers understanding the literacies of their learning areas and being able to mobilise effective literacy practices to support student learning outcomes. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic teachers across the globe were forced to (re)…
Where are the students? A close reading of priorities and silences in scholarly and public debates on VCE English (1990–2021)
Debates about subject English in Australia are often conducted through the senior years curriculum. In light of the anticipated interest in the new Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) English study design released in 2022 to be implemented in 2023, this paper outlines the current state of research on the VCE English subject by mapping areas of interest, types of evidence and gaps in research. The authors utilise a hybrid approach of narrativ…
Critical considerations of the challenges of teaching national literatures in Australia in the 21st century
Power of country
As a curriculum area, English has been foundational to empire, invasion, and colonisation of Indigenous peoples the world over. It therefore requires considered scholarship to reimagine how to engage with and teach literature in English. In this article, we explore the enduring problem of English and its inheritances, as well as the ways in which Indigenous voices are currently manifest in classroom contexts. We then propose Indigenous relational…
Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers
Disrupting intertextual power networks
This paper thinks with the concept of intertextuality to consider the multiple intersecting power structures inside and outside of literary education in secondary schools that continue to dominate text selection policies and teaching practices. We draw on our research with in-service teachers to reconsider how intertextual networks circulate on multiple levels: textual, social, cultural, and institutional. Although the concept of intertextuality …
What Do We Want Students to Know from Being Taught a Poem
This paper uses a Gwen Harwood poem to open up questions of “knowing” around the teaching of Literature. Following our own brief reading of the poem, we particularly discuss ways in which questions of knowing/knowledge have been considered in Literature teaching historically, such as: - the binary of “knowledge” and “experience” - the role of the cognitive in teaching/studying Literature - forms of knowing that include the aesthetic and affect - …
Reading in the (post)digital age
While “born digital” artefacts such as video games and e-books have been part of secondary school English in Anglophone countries for over two decades, databases of mass-digitised (hence “re-mediated”) literary texts are yet to have a significant presence in, or influence on, literary work in subject English. The authors contend that engagement with these digitised texts requires a postdigital “literary literacy”. They explore how “distant readin…
Teacher-researchers
Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to mobilise change in the secondary years of schooling, interventions into the canon must move beyond (…
Contingencies of Meaning Making
This paper draws on interviews conducted as part of the Australian Research Council funded Discovery project Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers. Those interviews inquire into the role of literary knowing in the professional learning of early career English teachers, focusing specifically on their experiences as they make the transition, via teacher education programmes, from university students of English to school…
The Capaciousness of No
The authors considered the capacious feeling that emerges from saying no to literacy practices, and the affective potential of saying no as a literacy practice. The authors highlight the affective possibilities of saying no to normative understandings of literacy, thinking with a series of vignettes in which children, young people, and teachers refused literacy practices in different ways. The authors use the term capacious to signal possibilitie…
Toward Worlding Settler Texts
Using Miles Franklinâ s My Brilliant Career as its focus, this paper explores the institutional possibilities and constraints of â worldingâ settler texts in secondary school and university environments. We argue that the teaching of texts, and those who teach texts in schools and universities, play a key role in negotiating national and international textual boundaries. This paper expands on the practices of reading, to incorporate an analysis o…
Reading the Local and Global
Recently Australia has witnessed a revival of concern about the place of Australian literature within the school curriculum. This has occurred within a policy environment where there is increasing emphasis on Australia’s place in a world economy, and on the need to encourage young people to think of themselves in a global context. These dimensions are reflected in the recently published Australian Curriculum: English, which requires students to r…
Reading Institutional Women
The essay uses Bourdieuâ s theories to show the ways in which some key female characters in institutions in Lilleyâ s Summer Heights High and Jolleyâ s fiction support the workings of institutional patriarchal power. In the final section, the author draws on the concept of â heterotopiaâ , in order to discuss the ways in which â these texts contest masculine institutional paradigms, and explore the limits and possibilities of the alternative view…
The Capaciousness of No
The authors considered the capacious feeling that emerges from saying no to literacy practices, and the affective potential of saying no as a literacy practice. The authors highlight the affective possibilities of saying no to normative understandings of literacy, thinking with a series of vignettes in which children, young people, and teachers refused literacy practices in different ways. The authors use the term capacious to signal possibilitie…
Power of country
As a curriculum area, English has been foundational to empire, invasion, and colonisation of Indigenous peoples the world over. It therefore requires considered scholarship to reimagine how to engage with and teach literature in English. In this article, we explore the enduring problem of English and its inheritances, as well as the ways in which Indigenous voices are currently manifest in classroom contexts. We then propose Indigenous relational…
Disrupting intertextual power networks
This paper thinks with the concept of intertextuality to consider the multiple intersecting power structures inside and outside of literary education in secondary schools that continue to dominate text selection policies and teaching practices. We draw on our research with in-service teachers to reconsider how intertextual networks circulate on multiple levels: textual, social, cultural, and institutional. Although the concept of intertextuality …
Teacher-researchers
Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to mobilise change in the secondary years of schooling, interventions into the canon must move beyond (…
Reading climate
This paper outlines the emergent findings and theoretical foundations of Reading Climate: Indigenous literatures, English and Sustainable Futures, cross disciplinary research in Indigenous Studies, Education, and Literary Studies. Our team investigates epistemologies for the teaching of secondary subject English and tertiary courses and how they might be productively reworked. We draw on ‘Indigenous relationality’ as proposed by Mary Graham, Elde…
Consent and literary education
Reading Institutional Women
The essay uses Bourdieuâ s theories to show the ways in which some key female characters in institutions in Lilleyâ s Summer Heights High and Jolleyâ s fiction support the workings of institutional patriarchal power. In the final section, the author draws on the concept of â heterotopiaâ , in order to discuss the ways in which â these texts contest masculine institutional paradigms, and explore the limits and possibilities of the alternative view…
Reading the Local and Global
Recently Australia has witnessed a revival of concern about the place of Australian literature within the school curriculum. This has occurred within a policy environment where there is increasing emphasis on Australia’s place in a world economy, and on the need to encourage young people to think of themselves in a global context. These dimensions are reflected in the recently published Australian Curriculum: English, which requires students to r…
Toward Worlding Settler Texts
Using Miles Franklinâ s My Brilliant Career as its focus, this paper explores the institutional possibilities and constraints of â worldingâ settler texts in secondary school and university environments. We argue that the teaching of texts, and those who teach texts in schools and universities, play a key role in negotiating national and international textual boundaries. This paper expands on the practices of reading, to incorporate an analysis o…
Reading in the (post)digital age
While “born digital” artefacts such as video games and e-books have been part of secondary school English in Anglophone countries for over two decades, databases of mass-digitised (hence “re-mediated”) literary texts are yet to have a significant presence in, or influence on, literary work in subject English. The authors contend that engagement with these digitised texts requires a postdigital “literary literacy”. They explore how “distant readin…
Teacher-researchers
Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to mobilise change in the secondary years of schooling, interventions into the canon must move beyond (…
Contingencies of Meaning Making
This paper draws on interviews conducted as part of the Australian Research Council funded Discovery project Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers. Those interviews inquire into the role of literary knowing in the professional learning of early career English teachers, focusing specifically on their experiences as they make the transition, via teacher education programmes, from university students of English to school…
The Capaciousness of No
The authors considered the capacious feeling that emerges from saying no to literacy practices, and the affective potential of saying no as a literacy practice. The authors highlight the affective possibilities of saying no to normative understandings of literacy, thinking with a series of vignettes in which children, young people, and teachers refused literacy practices in different ways. The authors use the term capacious to signal possibilitie…
What Do We Want Students to Know from Being Taught a Poem
This paper uses a Gwen Harwood poem to open up questions of “knowing” around the teaching of Literature. Following our own brief reading of the poem, we particularly discuss ways in which questions of knowing/knowledge have been considered in Literature teaching historically, such as: - the binary of “knowledge” and “experience” - the role of the cognitive in teaching/studying Literature - forms of knowing that include the aesthetic and affect - …
Critical considerations of the challenges of teaching national literatures in Australia in the 21st century
Power of country
As a curriculum area, English has been foundational to empire, invasion, and colonisation of Indigenous peoples the world over. It therefore requires considered scholarship to reimagine how to engage with and teach literature in English. In this article, we explore the enduring problem of English and its inheritances, as well as the ways in which Indigenous voices are currently manifest in classroom contexts. We then propose Indigenous relational…
Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers
Disrupting intertextual power networks
This paper thinks with the concept of intertextuality to consider the multiple intersecting power structures inside and outside of literary education in secondary schools that continue to dominate text selection policies and teaching practices. We draw on our research with in-service teachers to reconsider how intertextual networks circulate on multiple levels: textual, social, cultural, and institutional. Although the concept of intertextuality …
Exploring issues of quality and equity through literacy learning in the time of Covid
It is well established that literacy as a social practice is fundamental to supporting and facilitating student learning across the years of schooling, and research has shown the importance of all teachers understanding the literacies of their learning areas and being able to mobilise effective literacy practices to support student learning outcomes. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic teachers across the globe were forced to (re)…
Where are the students? A close reading of priorities and silences in scholarly and public debates on VCE English (1990–2021)
Debates about subject English in Australia are often conducted through the senior years curriculum. In light of the anticipated interest in the new Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) English study design released in 2022 to be implemented in 2023, this paper outlines the current state of research on the VCE English subject by mapping areas of interest, types of evidence and gaps in research. The authors utilise a hybrid approach of narrativ…
The ongoing crises facing teacher education
In 2022, after two years of the COVID virus profoundly interrupting social connection, learning, work and human mobility, governments worldwide turned material and rhetorical attention to life ‘post-pandemic’. Understandably, teachers who were central in keeping communities virtually connected during the pandemic—are positioned as core to a return to the quality of life and to gaining social futures beyond COVID-19. This is reflected in the theme…
Consent and literary education
Colonial taxonomies
In this paper we bring British and Australian perspectives together to question the non-fiction/fiction binary that we see in English classrooms, and to consider the liminal nature of some texts. In doing so we argue for the troubling of a hierarchy in the English classroom that draws on colonial histories of the subject to perpetuate the notion that fiction is the ultimate means through which students can understand the subject, its intentions, …
Unsettling subject English in the twenty‐first century
This paper uses examples from Australia and England to explore subject English with regard to the multiple metaphors inherent in the terms ‘settling’ and ‘unsettling’. In doing so we are concerned with imagining a future for a subject English curriculum which dislodges it from its imperial, colonial roots. In the first instance, we outline the existing approaches to unsettling English in England and Australia and the challenges and limitations of…
Reading climate
This paper outlines the emergent findings and theoretical foundations of Reading Climate: Indigenous literatures, English and Sustainable Futures, cross disciplinary research in Indigenous Studies, Education, and Literary Studies. Our team investigates epistemologies for the teaching of secondary subject English and tertiary courses and how they might be productively reworked. We draw on ‘Indigenous relationality’ as proposed by Mary Graham, Elde…
Resistance, Reform, and Reimagination
In settler colonial contexts, education remains entangled with the imperial project. Grappling with the work of reconciliation and redress, education authorities have begun rewriting curricula to respond to the colonial inheritance in subject English. In this paper, we read three official secondary English curricula – from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Ontario, Canada – asking how each has responded to coloniality. Across these documents w…
Sociology (15 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Literacy, Media, and Education (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Curriculum (6 works)