1. DAY 2
No text without context

2. No text without context…

3. Teachers need interpretation skills.
The study of scripture
The study of scripture in a classroom context takes the reader into the world of Jewish and Christian believers. Teachers need to develop interpretation skills to appreciate the understandings of God and religious experience that are presented in Biblical texts.
Teachers need interpretation skills.

4. A Catholic Approach
In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to the person in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words (ccc109)

5. The inspired Word of God
A catholic approach
Not fundamentalist
The inspired Word of God
the work of human authors conditioned by their time, place, culture and worldview.
Catholics do not read scripture from a fundamentalist understanding. Such an approach begins with the view that the Bible, is error free, historically accurate and therefore should be read and interpreted literally in all its details.
This is not the approach taken in the Catholic Church or in the religion classroom. Rather, the Catholic Church’s understanding of scripture accepts the Bible as the inspired Word of God and as the work of human authors who were conditioned by their time, place, culture and worldview.

6. LITERARY READING OF SCRIPTURE
The literary genre of the text gives us a clue as to how it is meant to be understood … A poem … evokes feeling A creation myth … tells us about our identity Narrative fiction … entertains The inspired Word of God
All great art and literature has the power to speak to our spirit. Over time the ancient poems, myths and stories that form the cannon of the Catholic Scriptures have meant so much to people that it has caused their communities to say … this is the word of God.

8. Methods for interpreting scripture
In current scholarship there are three groups of theories for interpretation of scripture:
author-centred (world behind the text)
text-centred (world within the text)
reader-centred (world in front of the text)
Hermeneutics is the science of reflecting on how a word or an event in the past time and culture may be understood and become existentially meaningful in our present situation – the search for the ultimate truth that is incarnate in the language of the text. – the task of hearing what an ancient text has to say…. The construction of literary meaning.
Theories:
Author-centred
text –centred
Reader-centred

12. Integrated approach World behind the text The world of the text
The world in front of the text

13. Three worlds of the Text
Paul Ricoeur – French Philosopher of the 20th Century.- philosophical anthropology Narrative identity and how people make meaning. – Hermeneutics – a theory of interpretation.
You would have heard the word hermeneutics used a lot in this video.

14. Integrated approach World behind the text The world of the text
The world in front of the text
Tate has used the theory of interpretation proposed by Ricoeur to synthesise the enormous volume of biblical scholarship.

15. "Polenov na tiver ozere" by Vasily Polenov - http://lj. rossia
"Polenov na tiver ozere" by Vasily Polenov - Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons -
Tate says that meaning results from a conversation (red line) between the world of the text (Noah and globe) and the world of the reader (modern reader) informed by the world of the author

16. The world of the text itself The world of the reader
"Polenov na tiver ozere" by Vasily Polenov - Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons -
So we have the world behind the text – the world of the author and their community
The world of the text itself
The world of the reader
Meaning – or interpretation is made from the integration of the three …

17. The world behind the text
What can we learn about the context of this text – the historical world of the human author(s); the cultural world the geography the community
creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by photographerglen:

18. The world of the text
What is actually in the text? What actually happens? What type of writing is this text? Who are the characters? Is there a particular structure of the text?

19. The world in front of the text
How has this text been used since its original audience? What meaning does the text have for me? How is this text used today? What does the Church say to Christians about the meaning of this text?

20. The Australian Curriculum: English and the General capability: Literacy are underpinned by the context-text model of language.
This model of language approaches language as a complete meaning-making system, the parts of which function in relational ways. It is based on the work of Michael Halliday.
The model contends that language can only be understood in context – the setting, the participants, the gestures and so on are all part of the context and influence the use and interpretation of language.
This diagram represents the notion that a text always occurs inside two broad contexts - a given social context, which occurs within a particular cultural context.
The use of this diagram in planning and teaching can support teachers to identify the literacy demands and opportunities of the curriculum, which in turn can support students to acquire and extend their language and literacy skills.
In P-2 much of the explicit teaching of literacy occurs in the English learning area. The context-text model of language supports teachers to interrelate the 3 strands of the Australian Curriculum: English – Language, Literature and Literacy.
We will now use “Who sank the boat?” by Pamela Allen as a way of considering how the model of language might support learning and teaching in the context of the English curriculum. (Read the text if staff are unfamiliar with it.)