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Establishing Linguistics in Secondary Education in Victoria, Australia
Author(s) -
Mulder Jean
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00010.x
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , applied linguistics , curriculum , linguistics , english language , australian english , sociology , term (time) , systemic functional linguistics , pedagogy , mathematics education , computer science , psychology , library science , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
VCE English Language , a recent addition to the Year 11 and 12 curricula in Victoria, Australia, is informed by the discipline of linguistics and provides a model for bringing the explicit study of language and linguistics into schools. This article focuses on the many issues and challenges of getting English Language established. Beginning with an overview of the subject, it is shown how the content knowledge and the approach taken to it has directly influenced the success of the subject. The second part of the article turns to examine what worked in getting this subject off the ground, along with how and why it worked. The two most important factors in creating this subject are suggested to have been the effective collaboration that evolved between academic linguists and secondary English teachers and the long‐term commitment to establishing the subject demonstrated by members of both groups.