professional renewal

The latest EIA (140) (English In Australia) has just arrived, so I spent a luxurious few hours reading on Saturday morning while Austin slept (our new arrival - I'm keen to change the spelling to 'Austen' though). This edition is a 'review of texts' but interestingly enough it reads more like a professional conversation (or at least some of the reviews do). I'm a little ashamed to say that the ass. editor, Mark Howie, sent me some books to review for this edition and I didn't end up finishing them. I hope he'll speak to me again. Generally, I figure that reviews should be a chance to engage in professional reflection and argument rather than a bland recount of the book and it's virtues as a classroom resource. Many academic pubs do this - the ubiquitous 'review essay', but VATE and AATE have rarely asipired to these heights. The VATE newsletter is often poorly lacking in this kind of critical discourse. There are pressures of course to make reviews accessible and 'helpful' to those 'time-poor' teachers looking for ready-made resources for year 8, period 6, but this latest EIA seems to have found the middle ground and done both quite well. Read the editorial here. I hope that Mark Howie is around for a while - he seems to have something interesting to say.