ABSTRACT
For some time now there has been considerable interest in, and awareness of, the centrality of popular culture and new media in many young people’s lives and of the need for teachers and researchers to recognise and respond to this in relevant and productive ways (e.g., Buckingham, 1998, 2000; Sefton-Green, 1998; Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Marsh & Millard, 2000). Schools and systems are increasingly coming to recognise the need for curriculum to engage with the ‘changed communicational landscape’ of the present day (Kress, 2000), and to develop strategies and frameworks to help students and teachers become more critically reflective and analytic about multimodal forms of text and literacy. In Australia, English and literacy curriculum propose an expanded view of literacy that incorporates both print and digital forms. The national Statements of Learning for English (Ministerial Council for Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2005), which outline common elements underlying English and literacy curriculum in each Australian State, utilise Luke, Freebody, and Land’s definition of the literacy young people need in the contemporary world as ‘the sustained and flexible mastery of a repertoire of practices with the texts of traditional and new communications technologies via spoken language, print and multimedia’ (Luke, Freebody, & Land, 2000, p. 20; MCEETYA, 2005, p. 4).
