Published Articles

Designing Assessments for the Primary History Classroom

How do you assess well when teaching primary history?

Writing Fairy Tales for Australia: Beatrice Wilcken (c. late 1830s/early 40s-1910)

April 12, 2015 | Women's History Network

AND why not fairies in Australia? Why should not our innumerable ferny glades, romantic valleys, mountainous passes, and lonesome glens, be peopled with fays and elves?

Fairies in the bush: The emergence of a national identity in Australian fairy tales

The outpouring of national sentiment as the colonies moved towards Federation
heralded a quest for the ‘Australianising’ of children’s books: fairy tales were no
exception. This paper explores efforts of the early writers
to locate an Australian fairyland in the ‘bush’ and contribute to the transmission of
national identity.

Researching teacher and author Olga Ernst

In 1904, a sixteen-year-old Victorian pupil Olga Ernst borrowed fairy folk from the rich European literature of her childhood and weaved them into magical stories set in the Australian bush. The result was Fairy Tales from the Land of the Wattle, published in Melbourne with illustrations by Dorothy Ashley. Ernst’s dedication tells us that she wrote the book to:

ROBYN FLOYD

Published Articles

Designing Assessments for the Primary History Classroom

Writing Fairy Tales for Australia: Beatrice Wilcken (c. late 1830s/early 40s-1910)

Fairies in the bush: The emergence of a national identity in Australian fairy tales

Researching teacher and author Olga Ernst