Creative writing and/in/beyond the Australian curriculum

In the previous section of this chapter I surveyed approaches and attitudes to creativity and creative writing in English, and in this section I examine the text and organisation of The Australian Curriculum: English from the perspective of teachers seeking to incorporate creative writing practices within their pedagogy. In presenting a close reading of the curriculum as a text, I am deploying the sorts of skills in critical textual analysis that are central to the work of English teachers and that they are able to bring to any text, including those that shape their work. In particular, in this section, I seek to map the opportunities and limitations that appear to be embedded within the text in terms of its pedagogical orientation and the direction it affords (or does not) for teachers looking to shape their teaching and assessment of student writing in ways that are compatible with it. In this section I also consider the particular discursive constructions of the writing teacher and of the student writer that are instantiated within The Australian Curriculum: English.