Reimagining poetry : innovative literacies, national agendas and digital landscapes

Renewing engagement with literature and integrating technologies in order to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student cohort are some of the challenges confronting 21st century English teachers as they go about implementing the Australian Curriculum: English. This chapter reports on an action research cycle of classroom inquiry into the interpretation and creation of poetry, drawing on both multimodal and traditional poetic forms. Three middle school teachers, in partnership with three university-based researchers, sought to explore the possibilities of one-to-one computing for creating differentiated literacy curriculum based on personalised learning goals and harnessing the affordances of multimodal literacy pedagogies. The learning gains achieved through this collaboration exceeded the expectations of all concerned: teachers, students and researchers. Student achievement was shown by their enhanced knowledge and creativity when interpreting and composing poetry. Furthermore, students increased their capacities in other ways, through collaborating and problem-solving, as well as increased technological mastery, meta-cognition and self-assessment. Such transformations in student learning challenge standardised notions of accomplishment in English and the kinds of pedagogy necessary to support their learning. The teachers involved in this research engaged in rich forms of collaboration, engaging in professional learning that matched the learning of their students. For academics, the co-creation of professional praxis with middle years teachers and students reaffirmed their sense of the value of generating literacy pedagogies through reflective dialogue within local, situated knowledge communities