Hello all,
This week’s Sydney SFL Friday seminars will be by Jennifer Blunden (University
of Technology, Sydney & University College London) with a talk entitled:
‘You have to go off instinct’: Writing in secondary school Visual Arts
As usual, it will be held this Friday at 4-5:30pm Sydney time, in The
University of Sydney Quad Seminar Room S204 (The Oriental Room), followed by a
drink together at the Gardener’s Grill in Victoria Park.
For those that cannot make it to Sydney, the seminars will be livestreamed
through zoom at:
https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/84805546745
Please note: Sydney has just shifted away from Daylight saving, so for those
coming online, please check you timezone.
The abstract and full schedule for Semester 1 is below!
Yaegan
Abstract:
‘You have to go off instinct’
writing in secondary school Visual Arts
Jennifer Blunden
What happens when students (and teachers) are landed with an assessable writing
task that has no supporting curriculum or pedagogy? In other words, how are
students prepared for the assessment, what do they actually write, how is their
writing assessed and to what effect, for both students and teachers?
This seminar looks at the curious case of secondary school art in the UK, where
year 12 students are required to submit a major written response as part of
their final A-level (HSC equivalent) assessment, which, in the words of one
teacher is ‘an absolute nightmare because it’s a complete change’ (Blunden
2019: 922). Drawing on a selection of exemplar student texts and interview data
from year 12 students and teachers, the session will probe the above questions.
It will consider in particular the strategies that students and teachers adopt,
what we can learn from examining student texts and marking criteria, what the
texts might reveal or suggest about the students’ emerging sense of
disciplinary identity, and why, with few exceptions (eg, Rothery 2008; Brewster
et al 1995; Weekes & Carrall 2018), the SFL and genre pedagogy literatures have
largely excluded the visual arts as a subject of interest. This work is a
developing exploration so questions and discussion from the seminar group will
be much encouraged!
References
Blunden, J (2019). ‘Bridge or barrier? Writing in secondary art & design
education in the UK’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 38(4),
916–926
Brewster, M et al (1995). Literacy in the visual arts (Write it Right Project),
Sydney: DSP Met East
Danielsson, K & Selander, S (2021). Multimodal texts in disciplinary education,
Springer
Forey, G (2020). ‘A whole school approach to SFL metalanguage and the explicit
teaching of language for curriculum learning’, Journal of English for Academic
Purposes, 44, 1–17
Rothery, J (2008). Write it Right Project, Sydney: DSP Met East
Tann, K (2013). The language of identity discourse: introducing a systemic
functional framework for iconography, Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 8(3),
361–391
Weekes, T & Carrall, L (2018). Literacy works for visual arts, books 1 & 2,
NSW: Literacy Works
Date
Presenter
Topic
23rd Feb
Lorenzo Logi &
Michele Zappavigna
The University of New South Wales
GIFS as social media paralanguage
1st March
Alex Garcia
The University of Sydney
“Guerra, conflicto y violencia”: understanding the construal of organised
violence in Spanish.
8th March
Mohamed Ali Bardi
Macquarie University
Towards a Systemic Functional Description of the nominal group in Arabic
15th March
Chunhui Zhang
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China & The University of Sydney
Fact construction in China's civil court trials: from the perspective of field
22nd March
Georgia Carr
The Australian National University & The University of Sydney
‘Who went upstairs for some private FUN?’ Unpacking, repacking and assessing
consent in sex education
29th March
No Seminar – Good Friday
5th April
No Seminar – Mid semester Break
12th April
Jennifer Blunden
University of Technology Sydney & University College London
‘You have to go off instinct’: writing in secondary school Visual Arts
19th April
Erika Matruglio
The University of Wollongong
The complicated case of cultural identity.
26th April
Lucy Macnaught
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Visible semiotic mediation as an ‘on ramp’ for investigating co-writing with
GPTs.
3rd May
Olivia Inwood
Western Sydney University
& Mohammad Makki
The University of Wollongong
Discourse of mis-disinformation on social media during a pandemic: A
comparative analysis of Persian and Australian Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram
data
10th May
Marie Quinn
University of Technology, Sydney
Using functional basis for a community reading program in rural Timor-Leste
17th May
Anni Hellwig
The University of Wollongong
"Digital, multimodal composition in English for architects and civil engineers
programs: Implications for theory and practice"
24th May
Thu Ngo
The University of New South Wales
Multimodal construction of literary concepts in children's film
Y. J. DORAN
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
Adjunct Professor, Linguistics, Indonesian University of Education
Honorary Associate, Linguistics, The University of Sydney
