A whole-school, cross-disciplinary approach to literacy
It was a pleasure to connect with David Thomas and Mark Howard from Elisabeth Murdoch College (Victoria, Australia) at the 2025 ASFLA Conference.
David writes:
“Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference (ASFLA) in Adelaide with my friend and colleague, Mark Howard. We presented on two different facets of implementing whole-school literacy pedagogy at Elisabeth Murdoch College.
What stood out most while reconnecting with Lexis Education and members of the Language & Literacy in Education Network (LLEN), who helped set us on this path, and engaging with educators and researchers applying SFL in innovative ways, was the growing recognition of Elisabeth Murdoch College's work within the broader education community. Our cross-disciplinary approach to literacy strengthens student outcomes without compromising disciplinary rigour or teacher expertise. Instead, it depends conceptual understanding and supports students to express their thinking with clarity and confidence.
A personal highlight of ours was the opportunity to meet two professional heroes, Beverly Derewianka and Pauline Jones. Their work, especially in contextualising SFL across disciplines, has profoundly shaped our teaching practice and curriculum design at EMC since our university days.”
Mark Howard, Pauline Jones, Bev Derewianka, Bronwyn Parkin and David Thomas at the 2025 ASFLA Conference.
One of the core purposes of the LLEN is exactly this: creating meaningful connections between educators and academics so that research-informed approaches to language and literacy can be translated into powerful classroom practice.
Conferences like ASFLA remind us how important these relationships are, not only for sharing theory, but for supporting sustained, whole-school change.
Seeing Elisabeth Murdoch College’s cross-disciplinary literacy work recognised within the wider education community speaks to what’s possible when schools, researchers and networks work together.
