Teaching difficult Indigenous topics through textual analysis: a demonstration of metalogue in secondary English

In this paper, we replicate and reflect on the experience of using dialogue to engage with difficult Indigenous topics in a secondary English classroom. Although we are a group of three experienced teachers from diverse familial and professional backgrounds, we take on the role of secondary school English students enacting a metalogue on a difficult Indigenous topic. Specifically, we focus on the pamphlet circulated by the Australian Government to all households in 2023, which provided detailed information about the proposed constitutional changes to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. This pamphlet includes 4000 words of arguments from both the Yes and No camps, each presenting their case for or against the proposed law. Our research addressed two primary questions: (1) What emerges from the textual analysis of “The Pamphlet” when explored through a recursive dialogue? and (2) What practices enable respectful dialogue around the language features of “The Pamphlet” as a difficult knowledge text? Our textual analysis identified key textual features of “The Pamphlet”, including use of time as a persuasive device, repetition, and the interplay of logos, pathos, and ethos. Additionally, our cogenerative dialogue and inductive thematic analysis identified four guiding practices for dialoguing around Indigenous matters in English classrooms. These are: situated, dialogic practices; being guided by ethical and emotional sensitivities; being informed by an awareness of positionality and diversity, and commitment to inquiry as generative action.