124 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2016 MATRUGLIO • The creation of historical perspectives in senior secondary writing Objectivity and critique: The creation of historical perspectives in senior secondary writing Erika Matruglio University of Wollongong, Australia ABSTRACT The increasing literacy demands of senior secondary studies have been noted by government agencies and scholars both in Australia and overseas. Disciplinary differences in writing has similarly received attention, although much of the research in this area has focused on the junior school, or spanned the whole of the secondary context. Less research has been focused speci ically on disciplinarity in the senior high school, or on differences within what may often be conceived as a single discipline, such as between writing in Modern and Ancient History. This paper investigates disciplinary difference in the context of senior secondary writing for Modern and Ancient History and the resulting demands on students. It focuses on the different ways that dialogism, or the negotiation of competing knowledge claims, is managed in each subject. The Systemic Functional Linguistic system of ENGAGEMENT is used in a discourse analysis of highly rated student writing to reveal how writers in the histories open up or close down spaces for other voices in their arguments. Analysis illustrates the ways that ‘objective evaluation’ is managed, illuminating one aspect of what is valued as appropriate argumentation and raising implications for the way that literacy pedagogy in the senior secondary subjects of Modern and Ancient History is understood. Introduction The senior secondary curriculum, with its highly specialised subject areas, places increasing demands on students’ literacy abilities when compared to the curric- ulum of the junior high school. Government literature acknowledges, to some extent, the need for ongoing literacy development in senior years, stating that ‘[m] any students need explicit support in managing the literacy demands of the post-compulsory curriculum, and … there are equity issues related to the increas- ingly complex and often abstract forms of text which students encounter as they progress through school.’ (Australian Department of Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, 1998, p. 40) The move away from common-sense meanings in senior years and the corresponding increase in complexity and abstraction in text has also been docu- mented by a range of educational linguistics scholars both in Australia and overseas (Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Cofin, 2006; Columbi & Schleppegrell, 2002; Macken-Horarik, Love & Unsworth, 2011; Martin, 1993; Rose & Martin, 2012; Schleppegrell, 2004). It has been argued that this movement towards less common-sense meanings in writing ‘is generally not made explicit or even understood by secondary school teachers, often causing more fragile learners … a great deal of confusion’ (Love, 2010, p. 350). The increasing literacy demands senior studies place on students, particularly in the humanities, can present a signi icant challenge for many who are often assumed to be able to manage writing for school by the time they reach their inal two years of schooling. In addition to the general increase in abstraction in the senior years, many students are expected to write in ways they have not written before, as several subjects either begin in Year 11 or are divided into speciality areas. For example in New South Wales, the junior subject ‘History’ becomes two separate subjects in Year