Given the fact Queensland is in the midst of implementing the first two-year cycle of the new English syllabus for Senior students and that Year 12 students are close to sitting their External Assessments, I’ve been reflecting on the design and content of the Prescribed Text List for English, especially as I’m currently in the throes of finalising booklists for 2021. So, I thought I’d write a short ‘report card’ for the Prescribed Text List which considers how balanced it is in terms of including both canonical and popular culture texts.
Image source: Wix
My starting point in this post is a comment by Moje and van Helden regarding the value assigned to popular culture texts which contends that ‘youth both use and are used by popular culture, and that working this tension, rather than simply avoiding it by avoiding popular culture, is the job of educators,’ (2004, p. 220 in Beach and O’Brien, 2008, p. 776). Readers, you’ll be happy to note that yes, the text list includes popular culture texts! Hurrah!
Let’s examine the text list a little more closely, shall we?
In the Literature Review commissioned by the QCAA which subsequently informed the redevelopment of the English syllabus, a central recommendation was that ‘Texts set for study should include a wider range of digital and other forms of multimodal texts than is currently apparent…and opportunities to analyse, create and use digital texts and technologies should be expanded,’ (Beavis & Hannaford, 2016, p. 3). Part of the criteria underpinning the Prescribed Text List for English (as well as English as an Additional Language), is that the texts on it must ‘have merit in genre and style, provide opportunities for sustained intensive study and challenge [and] provide opportunities for student engagement,’ (QCAA, 2018, p. 1). The text list is organised according to text types: those for the External Assessment, plus separate categories for novels and prose texts, plays and drama texts, film and TV/multimodal and poetry.
At first glance, one could perhaps argue that the text list is too heavy-handed in terms of its focus on literary texts and this is certainly the case if you were to only consider the presence of 23 texts in the film and TV/multimodal category compared with 57 other literary texts (excluding the lone graphic novel in the novels and prose category, which certainly gives weight for the argument that should definitely be more graphic texts on the set text list). On the flipside, if you want to get all ‘Positive Polly’, it is actually incredible that there is an entire category devoted to film, television and multimodal texts, which includes films like Hidden Figures and Lion and TV shows such as Stranger Things and Cleverman. This is true progress. Especially given the incredibly myopic views of influential education commentators, such as our Negative Nancy *friend* Kevin Donnelly who takes issue with educational documents which dare to ‘[explode] the definition of literature to include “multimodal” texts….[which] undermines the place of literature in the classroom,’ (2010, p. 29).
Does there need to be more popular culture texts studied in English classrooms? Yes. However, the Prescribed Text List does not preclude schools from studying texts that do not appear on it, which actually opens the door for wider engagement with popular culture texts, including digital and multimodal ones. Indeed, as English teachers, including such texts aligns with Beavis’ contention that doing so recognises ‘the diversity of children’s experience of finely shaped imaginative worlds and the ways in which new possibilities for meaning-making are creating new textual forms,’ (2014, p. 89 in Kitson, 2017, p. 59).
So, does the Prescribed Text List pass? Yes, readers…it does!
Giphy source: Wix
References
Beach, R. and O’Brien, D. (2008). Teaching Popular-Culture Texts in the Classroom. In Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. J. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of research on new literacies. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis Group.
Beavis, C. & Hannaford, J. (2016). English Literature Review – Senior Syllabus Redevelopment. Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority (QCAA).
Donnelly, K. (2010). The Ideology of the National English Curriculum. Quadrant, 54(5), 26–31.
Kitson, L. (2017). Exploring opportunities for literary literacy with e-literature: To infinity and beyond. Literacy Learning – The Middle Years. 25:2, 58-68.
Queensland Curriculum & Assessment Authority (QCAA). (2018). Prescribed text list for English and English as an Additional Language 2019–2021. Queensland Government. https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/portal/syllabus/server/portal/snr_english_eal_prescribed_texts_list_2019-21.pdf