How are English texts selected to teach students from culturally diverse backgrounds in Australia and England? The English curricula in both countries aim for students to read and interpret meanings through texts, while learning about their culture, and that of cultural others. However, the current list of prescribed texts in both curricula are dated and are not frequently changed, nor are new culturally diverse and contemporary texts easily added to reading lists. This makes some curriculum aims difficult to achieve if students are disengaged or do not relate to the content or themes in the prescribed texts. This article proposes that a post-colonial theoretical approach be considered when selecting texts to teach contemporary students from diverse cultural backgrounds. A post-colonial approach does not mean selecting post-colonial texts, or texts that address post-colonial themes, but is rather a method of selecting and comparing literature of any genre that engages with historical and contemporary issues, with particular focus on race, social class and gender. A post-colonial approach would mean that culturally diverse students may better engage with discussions of contemporary issues using a wider range of texts in classrooms.

In this paper, we study the cultural semantics of the personhood constructmindin Trinidadian creole.We analyze the lexical semantics of the word and explore the wider cultural meanings of the concept in contrastive comparison with the Anglo concept. Our analysis demonstrates that the Anglo concept is a cognitively oriented construct with a semantic configuration based on ‘thinking’ and ‘knowing’, whereas the Trinidadianmindis a moral concept configured around perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. We further explore the Trinidadian moral discourse ofbad mindandgood mind, and articulate a set of cultural scripts for the cultural values linked with personhood in the Trinidadian context. Taking a postcolonial approach to the semantics of personhood, we critically engage with Anglo-international discourses ofthe mind, exposing the conceptual stranglehold of the colonial language (i.e., English) and its distorting semantic grip on global discourse. We argue that creole categories of values and personhood — such as the Trinidadian concept ofmind— provide a new venue for criticalmindstudies as well as for new studies in creole semantics and cultural diversity.

As New South Wales (NSW) bids farewell to the 2009-2014 Area of Study concept 'Belonging', this article summarises some critical reflections from English teachers on the main pedagogical issues encountered when using prescribed texts to teach 'Belonging' to both the Standard and Advanced English courses in contemporary classrooms. These reflections are convened under three areas for further consideration, which includes an analysis of the Area of Study (NSW Board of Studies English Stage 6 Syllabus), an examination of the prescribed texts listed, and the main challenges teachers have identified with using both the NSW English Stage 6 Syllabus and set prescribed texts to engage contemporary students. The discussions raised in this article can be considered by NSW educators when selecting texts and designing units of work for teaching the new 2015-2020 Area of Study concept 'Discovery'. Keywords Pedagogy Á English texts Á Culturally diverse texts Á Area of Study Á Belonging Á Discovery Á Higher School Certificate (HSC) Á Board of Studies Á Secondary education 123 Aust. Educ. Res.

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