Teaching Consent in Secondary School English
Last week, we were excited to launch a landmark report in collaboration with the Literary Education Lab (Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne). The report looks at the ways high school English curriculum can best highlight diverse perspectives on issues of consent, and demonstrates that the teaching of literature is an important site for consent education.
Watch our expert panel discuss the findings in a recording of our live event at the Wheeler Centre, or read the full report.
In early 2021, in the wake of the global #MeToo movement, an online petition in Australia generated more than 500 testimonies from school students, depicting experiences of sexual assault during their time at school and asking for more emphasis to be given to consent education in secondary schools.
In response, the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) advised that consent education would be introduced into the Australian curriculum in holistic, age-appropriate ways.
This event explores research conducted by the Literary Education Lab (University of Melbourne) in collaboration with Stella. The Teaching ‘Consent’ report looks at the ways high school English curriculum can best highlight diverse perspectives on issues of consent, and demonstrates that the teaching of literature is an important site for consent education.
At this in-conversation event, young adult author Rebecca Lim, well as high school English teacher Antony Monteleone, will join the report’s lead author Professor Larissa McLean Davies to discuss its findings. Panellists will consider the implications of this research for pre-service English teacher preparation and in-service professional learning, as well as the support that teachers need to lead conversations about consent in English classrooms.
Please note: Cath Moore was unable to appear at this event.
Rebecca Lim is an Australian writer, illustrator, editor and lawyer. She is the author of over twenty books, including The Astrologer’s Daughter (a Kirkus Best Book of 2015 and CBCA Notable Book for Older Readers), Wraith and the internationally bestselling Mercy. Her work has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, shortlisted multiple times for the Aurealis Awards and Davitt Awards, and longlisted for the Gold Inky Award and the David Gemmell Legend Award. Rebecca is a co-founder of the Voices from the Intersection initiative to support emerging young adult and children’s authors and illustrators who are First Nations, People of Colour, LGBTIQA+ or living with disability, and is a co-editor of Meet Me at the Intersection, a groundbreaking anthology of YA #OwnVoice memoir, poetry and fiction. Her most recent novel, Tiger Daughter, was published in February 2021. It is a powerful novel about growing up Asian in Australia.
Antony Monteleone is a secondary school teacher in the outer west of Melbourne. A teacher of English, Literature and History whose passion is working with students to see education as an authentic and liberating experience.
Larissa McLean Davies is Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research is concerned with the education of teachers across the career span, and specifically with how disciplinary knowledge is understood in the context of decolonising curricula imperatives.
Emeritus Professor Helen Cahill leads a body of research addressing child and youth wellbeing. She has developed a number of disaster recovery, violence-reduction, social and emotional learning, gender rights, sexuality, and drug education programs for use in schools and community settings in Australia, as well as a range of countries across the Asia-Pacific and East and Southern Africa regions. She has authored over 100 publications, including over 40 wellbeing education programs for use in school and community settings. She is lead author of Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships, an open access, evidence-informed social and emotional learning and respectful relationships education program for Australian students from ages 5-18, and the UNESCO Connect with Respect program for prevention of school related gender-based violence.
