Category: Education

  • Rosenshine’s (and Stevens’!) SIX fundamental instructional “functions”

    Rosenshine’s (and Stevens’!) SIX fundamental instructional “functions”

    Rosenshine’s principles of instruction aren’t anything new. Their origin is the 1960s in the direct instruction work initiated by Siegfried Englemann and Carl Bereiter in their work with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Rosenshine and Stevens themselves readily point out the influences of their instructional model: Gagne’s “components of instruction” (1970), Good and Grouws’ “key instructional behaviours” (1979) and Hunter’s “Lesson Design” (1981). Rosenshine and Stevens also identify “How to Instruct” (1945), a series developed during in Second World War by the War Manpower Commission.

    Similarities with earlier models

    It’s interesting to not how similar all these approaches to direct instruction – including Rosenshine’s – actually are. For instance, Robert Gagne’s sequence (or “events“) looks like this:

    1. Gaining attention
    2. Informing the learner of the objective
    3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
    4. Presenting the stimulus material
    5. Providing learning guidance
    6. Eliciting the performance
    7. Providing feedback
    8. Assessing the performance
    9. Enhancing retention and transfer

    Thomas Good’s and Douglas Grouws’ “instructional behaviours” looks like this:

    Madeline Hunter’s sequence looks like this:

    Rosenshine and Stevens’ model

    Teaching Functions, a 1986 paper by Rosenshine and Stevens presents the model for instruction that is currently in vogue across the UK. Like these direct instruction models from the 1970s and 1980s, it presents the teaching of new materials as a sequence:

    Of course, this is an early form of the principles of instruction (which number 17 by the time they were popularised by the IAE pamphlet in 2010).

    Points that seem ignored

    What’s very interesting about Teaching Functions is that the writers make a number of observations about how and when this instructional model should be delivered. Of course they suit many curriculum subjects – but there are a number where the model isn’t relevant. This point seems to be ignored – or missed – by lots of the Rosenshine enthusiasts.

    This is not a one-size-fits-all approach: “It would be a mistake to claim that the teaching procedures which have emerged from this research apply to all subjects, and all learners, all the time. Rather, these procedures are most applicable for the “well-structured” (Simon, 1973) parts of any content area, and are least applicable to the “ill-structured” parts of any content area.” The writer’s go on to explain that this type of instruction suits the learning of facts/knowledge: “It would be a mistake to claim that the teaching procedures which have emerged from this research apply to all subjects, and all learners, all the time. Rather, these procedures are most applicable for the “well-structured” (Simon, 1973) parts of any content area, and are least applicable to the “ill-structured” parts of any content area.“

    Rosenshine and Stevens make it clear that their “functions” suit a step-by-step approach which can be applied repeatedly (not general skills): “Thus, the results of this research are less relevant for teaching composition and writing of term papers, analysis of literature, problem solving in specific content areas, discussion of social issues, or the development of unique or creative responses.“

    I’m interested in their comments regarding English teaching. The writers see value in using the approach for learning the facts of the text, for instance: “In teaching literature, there is a place for explicit teaching in teaching about the characters, setting, plot, and theme identification. But these procedures are less relevant for teaching students to appreciate the story, evaluate the ideas, or critique the style of writing.”

    Research on “human information processing”

    Teaching Functions, the authors claim, is based on “recent research on human information processing” (1970s, of course). They make important points about how to deal with limits of a learner’s working memory:

    • Teachers should not present too much new information in one go. Instead, take small steps with practice.
    • Start by reviewing relevant prior knowledge.
    • State objectives/learning journey of the lesson. “Teachers provide this support by previewing lessons, telling students what they are going to learn; by relating the new information to what students have previously learned; and by providing organizers and outlines for the lesson.”
    • Teachers should provide activities that enable learners to transfer new material from working memory to long-term memory. It requires teachers to ask questions, require students to summarise ideas in their own words, make connections between prior and existing knowledge, students tutor each other, practice steps in a new skill, provide feedback.
    • Rosenshine and Stevens advocate “overlearning”. (repeating and rehearsing basic material)This enables automatic retrieval of prior learning (which helps when confronted with new material). “Retention and application of previously learned knowledge and skills comes through overlearning, that is, practice beyond the point where the student has to work to give the correct response. This results in automatic processes which are rapidly executed and require little or no conscious attention.“

    Six fundamental instructional functions

    The sequence of instruction – based on the models of Good and Grows and Hunter – are:

    1. Review, check previous day’s work (and re-teach, if necessary)
    2. Present new content/skills
    3. Guided student practice (and check for understanding)
    4. Feedback and correctives (and reteach, if necessary)
    5. Independent student practice (and reteach, if necessary)
    6. Weekly and monthly reviews

    They describe demonstration, guided practice, and independent practice as the “instructional core”.

    Rosenshine and Stevens also point out that the six functions aren’t unusual features of the classroom – it’s just that not enough time is spent on them at the right time: “Although all classrooms have these components, they are not always carried out effectively. All classrooms have demonstrations, but frequently they are too short, there are too few examples, and the examples are imprecise or unclear. All classrooms have guided practice, but often it is infrequent or too brief, there are loo few questions and examples, and too little checking for student understanding. All teachers also correct student errors, but frequently the corrections are uninformative, consisting of only a single word or sentence; reteaching in small steps occurs seldom; and there is insufficient systematic guided practice to ensure error-free performance. All classrooms have independent practice, too, but frequently too great a proportion of classroom time is allocated to independent practice, especially without immediate feedback, and students are expected to learn too much from worksheets. Frequently the teacher does not circulate to help students during independent practice and does not reteach when necessary. All classrooms have review, but frequently there is insufficient reteaching of material missed during review, and the review and practice does not continue until student responses are rapid and firm.“

    The second half of Teaching Functions comprises a review of the research into the research guiding each of the six functions. Rosenshine and Stevens describe examples about how the functions are put into practice.

    Review

    The importance of reviewing past learning is emphasised: “a daily review is a teaching function that could be done more frequently in most classrooms“.

    Present new content

    In the “present new content/skills” function, they provide guidance on making a clear presentation:

    They summarise: “it is important for teachers to state the goals of the lesson, provide students with explicit, step-by-step demonstrations of the new material, use many examples, and check to see that all the students understand the material before proceeding to the next point.”

    Guided student practice

    Following demonstration is guided student practice “in which the teacher leads the students in practice, provides prompts, checks for understanding, and provides corrections and repetition“. They also advocate alternating from brief demonstrations to guided practice and back (“making the two steps seem as one“).

    More effective teachers spend more time in guided practice: “In summary, the guided practice function is usually led by the teacher who:

    • Asks a large number of questions
    • Guides students in practicing the new material, initially using prompts to lead students to the correct response and later reducing them when students are responding correctly – Checks for student understanding
    • Provides feedback
    • Corrects errors
    • Reteaches when necessary
    • Provides for a large number of successful repetitions“.

    Rosenshine and Stevens suggest that it is important that learners get a very high success rate in their answers to teacher questions reviewing learning (something like 80-95% correct). They advocate ensuring success by 1) teaching in small steps and 2) practice until over learning occurs.

    Checking for understanding methods include:

    • “Prepare a large number of oral questions beforehand
    • Ask many brief questions on main points, supplementary points, and on the process being taught
    • Call on students whose hands aren’t raised in addition to those who volunteer
    • Ask students to summarize the rule or process in their own words
    • Have all students write the answers (on paper or chalkboard) while the teacher circulates
    • Have all students write the answers and check them with a neighbor (frequently used with older students)
    • At the end of a lecture/discussion (especially with older students) write the main pointson the board and have the class meet in groups and summarize the main points to each other.“

    The writers present methods for organising and conducting practice, including: random vs. ordered turns, accepting call-outs, and choral versus individual responding. Choral/group responses appear to be useful in the research presented – when learners are in smaller groups.

    Feedback and correctives

    The fourth function involves responding to answers and correcting learners’ mistakes. After describing the different ways students can answer, Rosenshine and Stevens explain how to respond to incorrect answers, prompting and re-teaching: “Generally, the most effective approach during teacher-led practice is to try to guide the student to the correct answer by using hints, prompts or simpler questions. However, this is useful only when these individual contacts remain brief (e.g., 30 seconds or less). Contacts of longer duration are detrimental because the teacher loses the attention of the rest of the students. If a student cannot be guided to the correct answer through a brief contact, it is necessary to reteach the material to that student. Usually this reteaching occurs while the rest of the class is doing independent seatwork, or at some other time of the day (e.g., during recess, art, group activities or before or after school).“

    They also suggest re-teaching in whole ability groups when several students make errors or to select students during independent work. Alternatively (in Mastery classrooms) students who understand/know the learning tutor the less secure.

    Rosenshine and Stevens summarise correction as: “whether one uses hints, prompts, or reteaching the material, the important point is that errors should not go uncorrected. In most cases, if a student makes an error, it is inappropriate to simply give the student the answer and then move on. It is also important that errors be detected and corrected early in a teaching sequence. If early errors are uncorrected they can become extremely difficult to correct later and systematic errors (or misrules) can interfere with subsequent learning.“

    Independent student practice

    Once students show 80% correct responses in guided practice, the writers suggest independent practice. During independent practice, students go through two stages:

    • unitisation – “During unitization the students are putting the skills together. They make few errors, but they are also slow and require a lot of energy to complete the task.“
    • automaticity – “When they have worked a sufficient number of problems correctly, and are confident, firm, and automatic in the skill, they are in the automaticity phase. The students’ responses become more automatic because they have practiced the skills to the point of overlearning.“

    Using the term “seatwork” to describe individual/paired student independent practice, Rosenshine and Stevens stress that effective teachers spend less time using this function: “although seatwork activities take place in all classrooms, the successful teachers spend a good deal more time than do average teachers in demonstrating what is being taught and in leading the students in guided practice. Students who are adequately prepared during the teacher-led activities are then more able to succeed during the seatwork. In contrast, the less successful teachers spent less time in demonstration and guided practice and relied more on self-paced, “individualized” materials, where students spent more time working alone.“

    They also suggest that it is beneficial for teachers to establish routines for independent practice “including what activities they are to do during this time, what they are to do after they complete their exercises, and how they are to get extra help if necessary.” Other ways of accomplishing independent practice are:

    • teacher-led – particularly with younger students and lower-attaining, short presentations with long periods of repeated questions with participation of students with high degree of student success.
    • independent practice with routines – they give the example of ECRI where a checklist of tasks is given
    • student cooperative practice – “Research using these procedures usually shows that students who do seatwork under these conditions achieve more than students who are in regular settings… Presumably, the advantages of these cooperative settings come from the social value of working in groups, and the cognitive value gained from explaining the material to someone and/or having the material explained to you.“

    Rosenshine and Stevens suggest that student engagement is improved by:

    Weekly and monthly reviews

    Rosenshine use “enhanced” to explain the effect of weekly and monthly reviews on learning. This final function has the briefest of explanations and, essentially, appears to be a means of teachers checking that information has been retained.

    Conclusion

    The final section of Teaching Functions states that more work needs to be done to explore each of the functions. Rosenshine and Stevens are also tentative in their endorsement of the merits of the functions.

    A copy of Teaching Functions by Rosenshine and Stevens can be downloaded HERE.

  • The Calm Before the Storm? English from the 1970s into the 1980s

    The Calm Before the Storm? English from the 1970s into the 1980s

    Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017)

    In this chapter Gibbons presents the period from the mid-1970s to the start of the National Curriculum as a high point for English teaching. The Bullock Report supported a renewal of importance of English across the curriculum. Until 1988, it was a period of freedoms for English departments to collaboratively develop curriculums and classroom learning activities that could encourage children with issues such as race, class and gender. It Enabled English to be about personal growth but also about a child’s relationship with culture and society. During this period teacher-based research projects evidenced a sense of passion and purpose. Gibbons examines the 100% coursework English GCSE (and its demise) as well as the National Writing and Oracy Projects.

    • Despite “grumblings” of Right, English was in the hands of the teachers. No pressure from direct state intervention into curriculum and pedagogy.
    • Gibbons: “The period from the 1970s into the 1980s has been described as one when, for an English teacher, it was easy to teach and to innovate.”
    • Expanding the Progressive Curriculum
      • Inner London Education Authority English Centre (later English & Media Centre) under leadership of Michael Simons, of Commision 7.
      • The English Centre helped to make study of media part of mainstream English work. Along with BFI.
      • Work of Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams all important.
      • Richard Hoggart – Uses of Literacy
      • Raymond Williams – The Long Revolution
      • Work through NATE and Joan Goody was increasing profession’s knowledge of multicultural texts. Goody set up the Caribbean Teachers’ Exchange and was highly influential in the growth of the literature of other cultures in the English classroom.
      • Growing interest in gender. Tyke Tyler became a typical text.
      • Gibbons: “Although issues of class were already important to pio­neers of the new English in the 1960s, race, ethnicity and gender were now also prominent in a child-centred view of the subject.4 English was a political subject in the way it was framed by progressive thinkers, and as such it reflected the evolving politics of gender, race and class where arguments were becoming more sensitive and more intense as the 1970s progressed.”
      • Reactions against progressive teaching. Gibbons: “It wasn’t a difficult argument to make; surely if the subject was driven by a child-centred, mixed-ability ethos, and was purporting to address issues of class, culture, society, gender, race and ethnicity, how could it possibly be paying proper attention to basic skills? And what was happening to the traditional canon of English literature? The caricature of the 1970s English teacher – liberal minded, eschewing grammar and great literature in favour of expression, personal response and relevant texts, was one that those on the right wing of educational thinking were quick to portray.”
    • The Bullock Report
      • Largest investigation into English teaching since 1921’s Newbolt Report.
      • 600 page report. Gibbons: “The enquiry was motivated by the kinds of sentiments expressed in the Black Papers over the supposed fall in standards in English, particularly in the context of comprehensive schooling, but if there was a political desire for a report that would lambast the state of progressive English teaching and its concurrent detrimental effects on the basic standards of reading, writing and spoken English, this was not fulfilled, as indeed it would not be when future Conservative administrations formed committees in the hope that a back-to- basics version of English would be recommended.”
      • Report did not support teaching of formal grammar. Suggested experiential learning of language.
      • Report found that standards weren’t falling. Found no evidence that creative and progressive education was threatening basic skills.
      • Gibbons: “It powerfully made the case for better resourcing for English departments and more specialist English teachers to be employed in schools, and came down on the side of mixed-ability teaching (whilst acknowledging the complexities of this type of pupil organisation).”
      • Gibbons: “The overall impression was that A Lan­guage for Life fully endorsed and vindicated the progressive approach to the teaching of English that had developed through the work of LATE and NATE to the Dartmouth conference and into the 1970s.”
      • Report drew on the work of the Schools Council Writing Research Unit and referenced James Britton‘s theories (derived from D.W. Harding – 1937) about the development of writing in children.
      • Recommended that all schools develop a language across the curriculum policy. Gibbons: “It’s likely that, in many institutions where policies were produced, they remained simply as paper exercises, and probably impacted little on practice; secondary schools are often graveyards for cross-curricular initiatives given such institutions’ size, complexity and very nature.”
    • The Vauxhall Manor Talk Workshop
      • Becoming Our Own Experts (1982)
      • At Vauxhall Manor School in London a working group was formed to consider the importance of oracy on the development of children’s learning. Work supported by Racheal Ferrar, the leader of the oracy project in ILEA.
      • Essentially a project led by teachers.
    • Schools Council English Projects
      • Gibbons: “it would be unfair to say that A Language for Life had no concrete impact. And though many of its recommendations went either unheeded or unimplemented, it had a powerful effect in that it endorsed a humane, child-centred, progressive model of English.”
      • Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod and Rosen – The Development of Writing Abilities 11-18 (1975).
        • Gibbons: “The research for this lengthy project had in fact taken place between 1966 and 1971, and was followed by a four-year development project during which individual teachers and groups put into practice some of the research team’s key findings. The project itself was cross-curricular, with the research team analysing over 2,000 pieces of writing from students across over 60 schools, with the ultimate aims being to reconceptualise how school writing was categorised and to propose a new model that would describe writing and its development.”
          • Writing described in terms of its function (transactional, expressive, poetic).
          • Writer given a spectator or participant role.
          • “The continuum constructed as a frame for analysis placed transactional writing/participant role at one end, passing through expressive writing to poetic writing/spectator role at the opposing end.”
        • Gibbons: “The painstaking approach to the collection of data and the analysis of scripts was symptomatic of perhaps the most serious attempt to throw light on school writing that had hitherto taken place. Read in conjunction with Language, Learner and the School, Language and Learning and Understanding Children Writing (Burgess et al., 1973), which emerged from the 1971 NATE conference, and put in the context of the Bullock report recommendations, it can be seen that many of the central ideas around growth English and its peda­ gogy and practice were perfecdy placed to affect oral and written work across the curriculum.”
        • Schools Council work in post-16 teaching.
          • “literature in the sixth form remained stubbornly Leavisite in form and approach”.
          • English 16-19 Project ran from 1975-1978, led by John Dixon.
          • Key findings in Education 16-19: The Role of English and Communication (1979).
          • Gibbons: “The most significant impact of the 16-19 project was probably the introduction of A-level courses in English language, media and communications. Its impact on literature teaching has been viewed as minimal as ‘only a limited liberalisation of approaches took place’ (Snapper, 2013, p. 54).”
    • English into the 1980s
      • Leading role of the English and Media Centre.
        • EMC resources:
          • School Under Siege (1979)
          • The Island (1985)
          • Changing Stories (1984)
          • Making Stories (1984)
        • Materials for Discussion series:
          • The English Curriculum: Gender (1985)
          • The English Curriculum: Media (1985)
          • The English Curriculum: Poetry (1987)
        • Gibbons: “The range and breadth of materials produced by the centre reflected a creative time for English teachers and departments, and when moves were made to radically transform the later years of secondary schooling with a revamped system of exam­inations, there was scope for English teachers to extend the creativity and richness of the curriculum for all students across the secondary age range.”
    • Development of 100% Coursework GCSE
      • Introduction of GCSE was “hugely positive move”.
      • Gibbons: “The GCSE opened up the study of literature for examination purposes to students of all abilities.”
      • First taught in 1986. A single exam system for all abilities first recommended by the Waddell committee 10 years earlier. Not until 1984 and Sir Keith Joseph.
      • Gibbons: “The 100 per cent coursework GCSE genuinely offered the opportunity to create an experience for students from 14-16 that enabled them to develop their abilities in English and be assessed in a way that rewarded their true potential.”
      • By late 1980s and early 1990s two-thirds of 16 year-olds were taking 100% coursework English GCSEs.
      • Gibbons: “It was a brief period, but one that many English teachers look back on as a golden age, recalling as they do the hours of work students would put in on redrafting pieces to include in their final folders, the rigour of the school and area moderation meetings (described in Gibbons and Marshall (2010)) and the fact that these were as much about professional development for the teachers as they were about agreeing standards. The workload for English teachers was significatly increased with 100 per cent coursework assessment, but the reality is that few complained of the burden given that what they saw was a humane assessment system which worked to the benefit of their children.”
    • The Untimely Death of 100% Coursework
      • Ended in 1991. John Major announced a cap of 40% coursework assessment – following discussions with right-wing thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies and initially set at 20%.
      • Save English Coursework campaign set up by Mike Lloyd. In survey of 4000 English departments 95% firmly in favour of max weighting of 20% exam and many not in favour of an exam.
      • Schools Council superseded by School Curriculum Development Committee in 1984.
      • National Curriculum Council established in 1988. Gibbons: “Although members of these bodies may have been teachers at some point, and certainly those working on English groups within the NCC had this pedigree, the bodies them­ selves were in effect quangos, and its members essentially civil servants. Before this centralisation began to take hold, however, English teachers had what might be seen as their last real opportunity to engage in profession-wide, officially endorsed, projects that reflected the point to which progressive, growth English had come by the end of the 1980s.”
    • National Writing Project and National Oracy Project
      • Perhaps last centrally-funded initiatives that genuinely involved teachers and NATE.
      • Margaret Meek, Helen Savva, Sue Horner (went on to lead English team at QCA), John Richmond, Douglas Barnes. ▾
      • Thomas Nelson drew together outcomes from the Writing Project:
        • Audiences for Writing (1989)
        • Becoming a Writer (1989)
        • Responding to and Assessing Writing (1989)
      • National Oracy Project ran from 1987 – 1993.
      • Gibbons: “The National Oracy and Writing projects were predicated on the notion – as was the ethos behind the work of subject associations like LATE and NATE – that teachers should be involved in investigating and seeking solutions to problems they saw in their own day-to-day work.”
      • Oracy project steered by Andrew Wilkinson (who coined term Oracy in 1960s). Also Douglas Barnes.
      • Oracy publications:
        • Oracy Issues newsletter
        • Talk journal
        • Occasional Papers: Oracy and Special Educational Needs (1992)
        • Teaching Talking and Learning (1990-1993)
      • Gibbons: “Both these projects represented a high point in the model of curriculum devel­opment”.
  • Macbeth: Prose Retelling

    Macbeth: Prose Retelling

    To a certain extent it’s difficult to read a Shakespeare text with a class in the same way that you’d read anything else. The archaic and rich language can confound children even if they watch a live performance or film version.

    I’ve found that students approach the text if time is spent at the start (after teaching the initial scene) securing understanding of the plot and characters before reading the play. Doing the following is effective:

    • outline the bare-bones of the entire play in 10 steps, each with a quote that students say aloud while miming an action;
    • reading a modern prose re-telling of the play;
    • reinforcing the names and roles of the characters;
    • viewing the short BBC Animated Shakespeare version of Macbeth.

    Over the years I’ve tried out all sorts of prose retellings: the Lambs’, Leon Garfield’s, brief summaries… The only writer I’ve found that not only re-tells the story but – appropriately – includes the original text is Marchette Chute. Chute was an American biographer working in the middle of the 20th century. Her Stories from Shakespeare helpfully includes all the plays, retold in a straightforward manner that captures the essence of the plot. Chute narrative voice frequently intrudes to point out an important moment in the play or to remind the reader of a beautiful use of language. There’s a sense of joyful enthusiasm about the plays which is conveyed to the reader.

    Here’s the opening of Macbeth:

    Macbeth is one of the greatest of the tragedies, swift as night and dark as spilt blood, with death and battle and witchcraft bound together in wonderful poetry to tell the story of a man and woman who destroyed themselves. Macbeth and his wife wanted the throne of Scotland, and they took it. But the act forced them into a murderer’s world of sleepless torment, always struggling to find safety and always sinking deeper in their own terror.

  • A New Progressivism: English in the 1960s and into the 1970s

    A New Progressivism: English in the 1960s and into the 1970s

    Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017)

    Chapter 2 – A New Progressivism: English in the 1960s and into the 1970s

    In this chapter Gibbons presents the period from the Dartmouth Seminar (1966) to the mid-1970s as “pivotal” in the development of English. He identifies the influence of Growth Through English as well as that of the Language in Use Project.

    • Comprehensive Schools + beginning of new progressive English
      • Not until Circular 10/65 (1965) that the requirement was made for all local authorities for a fully comprehensive schooling system.
      • Formation of the London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE).
      • John Dixon – Growth through English (1967) – was the direct product of the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar.
      • Old-style grammar school curriculum not suited to post-war schools and new teachers not equipped for challenges of teaching children. Comprehensive teaching in London from 1940s meant that London teachers better prepared.
      • Gibbons: “In general terms the new model was progressive; it was child centred, had a focus on pupils’ own uses of language, emphasised the expression of personal experience and, though it valued literature, it did so in very different ways to the reverential appreciation of the canon that characterised the Leavisite-inspired Cambridge school of English that was at the heart of the bulk of traditional English teaching in the grammar school.”
      • Growth English model (English as language) evolved from work of James Britton, Nancy Martin, Harold Rosen, Douglas Barnes and others criticised for neglecting literature (Gibbons: “but they still wanted children to take ownership of the canon”).
      • Model of English emerging from London was not “a formulated theory that was converted into practice”. Work of LATE was diverse.
      • For the first time popular culture not treated as corrupting influence on character and language.
      • Strong emphasis on teachers as professionals (evening programmes, conferences).
      • LATE also a campaigning organisation.
      • Gibbons: “LATE was never a top-down policy-making body that decided on some theoretical or ideological sense of the best way to teach English; its approaches evolved from the projects of its study groups, and these study groups published reports and convened conference workshops that enabled new practices to be dis­seminated more widely. LATE supported the setting up of similar regional networks across the country. Always the individual and collective drive was not to promote a particular view of the subject, but to seek practical ways by which to improve the quality of teaching and learning for children. Theoretical ideas were harnessed when these shed light on the practical challenges faced and the solutions proposed. Academics and practitioners worked together in ways that appeared to have cut across any perceived hierarchies; theory and practice seemed genuinely to be in dia­logue.”
      • Gibbons: “The diverse nature of activities and practices meant that a simple definition or title for this model of English was difficult to ascribe with any real accuracy. It can be called growth English, or English as language, or London English; no single title accurately encompasses the range of ideas contained therein nor recognises that for different teachers different areas of work were more important than others. It was a new, broad progressive English, the boundaries of which continued to expand.”
      • The Aims of English Teaching (1956) described “the aims that lie behind current practice in teaching the mother tongue”. Released via British Council and shows the influence that LATE. A time when the judgement of the profession was respected.
      • The Aims of English Teaching (1956) “forefronted language and experience as the critical building blocks for the subject, highlighted the importance of the relevance of English to children’s lives, stressed the need for personal response and engagement with poetry rather than traditional literary critical analysis and emphasised the need to talk about language in context rather than promoting the teaching of formal grammar.”
      • Reflections (1963) – text book first articulation as a formed philosophy. Gibbons: “It was the first mass commercially produced concrete and practical embodiment of the English that has been variously termed London English, English as language or personal growth English”.
    • Growth of growth English
      • NATE formed in 1963.
      • In embryonic stages there was a struggle between London and Cambridge representatives (mainly argument about NATE being top-down or bottom-up).
      • Cambridge views realigned with The Use of English magazine and the English Association.
      • English-as-language was central place in policy forums of NATE by mid-1960s.
    • 1966 Dartmouth Seminar
      • Gibbons: “It was perhaps the Dartmouth Seminar that proved to be the most significant single event in establishing the personal growth, English-as-language, model as what might be termed the accepted orthodoxy, in one form or another, for the teaching of English from the mid-1960s until – still for many – the current day, not only in England, but across countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia.”
      • Gibbons: “The seminar itself appears now as an almost unbelievable historical phenomenon”.
      • 50 teachers (half British, half American) met for six weeks at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to make decisions about the role of English in the curriculum.
      • Americans were already starting on an early form of the standards-based reform agenda and proposed a structured curriculum.
      • English were advocating a shift from subject to learner.
      • Gibbons: “Whether or not the 40 days of debate at Dartmouth resulted in a consensus, however, is unclear.”
      • 11 points of agreement were published (student centred, prioritised speaking and listening, argued against setting and streaming and put a high value on creativity and imaginative writing.
      • Series of papers:
        • Douglas Barnes – Drama in the English Classroom
        • Geoffrey Summerfield – Creativity in English
        • John Dixon – Growth Through English
        • Herbert Muller – The Uses of English
      • Gibbons (on Growth Through English): “it is from this tide – whether they know it or not – that most English teachers’ definition of the personal growth model of the subject comes, and it formed the basis of one of Brian Cox’s five models of English when he came to write the first National Curriculum for English in the late 1980s.”
      • Gibbons discusses Growth Through English. Dixon attacked Cambridge cultural heritage model of the subject. Dixon’s model was termed “language and personal growth”. Gibbons: “This model would have a strong respect for children’s own language and dialect, and children’s own attempts at writing were to be placed on the same language continuum as the work of the literary greats; even children’s gossip should exist on the very same continuum”.
      • Gibbons: “In reality, there were most certainly differences of opinion even within the British contingent on the interpretation of growth in itself – it meant something very different to Leavis-inspired Cambridge English teachers, who would have more closely aligned growth with great literature and the power of such material to nurture and develop young minds than it did to those teachers from the NATE representation who were advocates of what is now commonly accepted to be personal growth English.”
      • Gibbons: “Surveys of English teachers (see, for example, research carried out by Goodwyn and Findlay (1999) and Marshall (2000)) have repeatedly shown that personal growth is the model the largest pro­ portion of the English teaching community point to as being central to their motivation and to their practice”
      • D. Allen – English Teaching Since 1965: How Much Growth (1980) – critical of the impact of the growth model (but suggests it had real impact in classrooms).
      • Gibbons: “However, in championing the growth model as the consensus ofDartmouth, Crowlh through English effectively established an English orthodoxy that – as time passed, and as its advocates increasingly took leading positions in NATE, engaged with government bodies as representatives of the English teaching community and played prominent roles in nationally funded projects – was seen to stand in opposition to the traditional Leavisite model of the subject and which undoubtedly held a prominent position in a majority of secondary English teachers’ hearts and minds. This new progressive English was certainly not merely personal growth, it was a broader notion of a progressive English that continued to develop and embrace new strands of thinking.”
    • The Theorising of English
      • English in Leavisite tradition had no overarching theory (just objectives); growth model articulated vision of English underpinned by theoretical ideas.
      • Tony Burgess: “the commitment to an underlying rationale for the teaching of English that could go on developing as a body of ideas … to try and build a sort of framework, or ongoing knowledge and theory… [others] resist the notion of a synthesis. It sounds too grand. They resist the idea of trying to coordinate different bodies of thought – they prefer to take intellectual positions that are not about the whole of English teaching.”
    • James Britton’s Language and Learning
      • James Britton was a founding member of LATE and a “driving force” behind research and campaigns around assessment of language and literature.
      • He forcefully sought to develop the over-arching philosophy of the subject. Gibbons: “He did this, in part, by drawing on his back­ ground in psychology, using this to help him to articulate ideas that would offer an account of the learning and development of children through their development and uses of language. It was this that formed his view of what the subject English ought to look like.”
      • Language and Learning was “an articulation ofgrowth pedagogy or the English as language model in its most overtly theoretical form, and as such it was a text that provided what might be termed a philosophical underpinning or foundation for English teachers who, in the wake of Dartmouth and Growth through English, were helping to establish the new child-centred version of English as the dominant pedagogy in England’s schools.”
      • Played significant role in bringing Vygotsky’s ideas to wider recognition.
      • Vygotsky’s ideas supported teachers instinctive feelings for the value of oracy in the classroom. (Britton incorporated them in spectator and participant roles – included in the Bullock Report.)
      • Gibbons: “In forefronting the importance of language in development, highlighting the value of oracy, emphasising the absolute need for children to be encouraged to bring their own language and experience into their learning and placing literature as an integral part of learning, and eclectically drawing on a breadth of key thinkers to shed light on examples of real children’s language use, Language and Learning was the book that to a large extent theorised the new progressive growth English. As such it sits as a powerful companion to Crowth through English – Dixon’s work a model of what English should look like, Britton’s the theoretical underpinning to add weight to the method.”
    • Language in Use Project
      • The Schools Council Programme in Linguistics and English Teaching began life as the Nuffield Programme in Linguistics and English Teaching in 1964, with Michael Halliday as its director.
      • (Halliday’s work on functional grammar seems to be influential in development of KS3 Literacy Strategies of 2000s.)
      • Peter Doughty, Pearce, Thornton – Language in Use (1971) – explored the functions of language in society but insisted that the starting point was children’s own language use.
      • Language in Use was 110 units of work, each made up of a sequence of lessons. Gibbons: “With activities employing discussion, group work, scripted and improvised drama and the use of tape recordings of real language in use, the heritage of the work was clearly the post-war London model of English. And whilst the focus of the activities was linguistic, there was no oppressive focus on grammatical terminology — the whole thrust of the material was for pupils to ‘understand much more fully than before the nature of their own experience as users of language’ with the level of explicit termi­nology expected to be left to ‘the judgement of those who teach them’ (ibid., p. 9). The aim, ultimately, was to develop pupils’ own competence as users of language themselves, but the text acknowledged that the link between developed under­ standing and increased competence was not straightforward.”
      • (Direct antecedent to LiNC in the early 1990s.)
      • Gibbons: “The success of the programme was in making this kind of language study in the classroom a serious pursuit, rooted in evidence and research from linguistic experts. It supported this approach to language work in a way that has always been blatantly missing for advocates of formal grammar teaching with explicit forefronting of facts and rules about correct usage.”
      • Unifying factor of different approaches was the idea of English being about the child and seeing the subject that began with the learner and the learner’s language and experience.
    • Progressive Growth English: increasingly political
      • Gibbons: “The focus of work on pupils’ own language use inevitably brought politics into the classroom as it would be impossible not to consider issues of gender, class and – increasingly in multicultural environments — ethnicity in English lessons.”
      • Commission 7 formed at the 1971 NATE conference to discuss the politics of English teaching.
      • Gibbons: “Commission 7 and what followed pointed towards a more explicitly political strand in the development of English – one that much more explicitly focused on race, class, gender and ethnicity and championed the advancement of equal opportunities as a major role for the subject and its teachers. In essence, there was a form of progressive politics that formed an umbrella for growth English, under which colleagues with differing views could congregate.”
    • Politics and Pupil Voice
      • Pupil strike in East London in 1971.
      • Chris Searle, probationary English teacher created anthology of children’s writing called Stepney Words. Was dismissed which caused walkout by children.
    • The New Progressive Growth English: backlash
      • Right-wing educationalists viewed progressive model of English as part of a failing progressive system. Perceived as coming from the Left.
      • The Black Papers. Discusses views of Arthur Pollard, English professor from Hull Uni.
      • Gibbons: “The Black Papers were influential in that they attracted much attention from sections of the media and from some policymakers and they were significant in marking the beginning of the kind of right-wing, traditionalist assault on progressive English that would be seen time and time again over subsequent decades.”
    • Conclusion:
      • No “coherent, neatly defined model” of English – there wasn’t a consensus. Gibbons: “English was during the period a highly contested subject.” But there had been significant changes to teaching of English.
      • Gibbons: “in the years following Dartmouth, this model of English – whether informed in individual teachers’ perspectives by thinking from psychology, cognitive develop­ ment, sociology or linguistics – had assumed a prominent position within English departments and that this was being reflected in both curricula and examinations in a decisive shift ‘from a Scrutiny conception of English in schools’ (Hilliard, 2012).”
      • C. Hillard – English as a Vocation (2012) – a lament to the loss of the Leavisite approach to English in schools.
      • Terry Eagleton: “there is no more need to be a card-carrying Leavisite today then there is to be a card-carrying Copernican: that current has entered the bloodstream of English studies in England as Copernicus reshaped our astronomical beliefs”
  • Knowledge Agenda for Macbeth

    Knowledge Agenda for Macbeth

    In my preparations for teaching Macbeth again I’ve collected a number of knowledge organisers created by teachers working in different school contexts in the UK. There are commonalities: they name characters, identify similar themes, list a handful of quotes to learn and offer some vocabulary to learn. All provide a list of terms (some straightforward, some complex [peripetaias, anagnorisis and hamartia featuring on several knowledge organisers!]. One of my favourites is set out like a Monopoly board with a brief description of each scene in the boxes around the edges. Many schools use the “knowledge” on the sheet as the basis of regular retrieval tests.

    While I haven’t anything against knowledge organisers in general – and, for some students, they might provide a sense of security – they are reductive and reinforce the loss of a learner’s agency over a literary text. A knowledge organiser for Macbeth, for instance, does little other than emphasise that the play is a static body of knowledge that just has to be (passively) learned and retrieved from memory. The essential aspects – the student developing critical skills to identify what’s significant about the text and entering into a personal relationship with it – get missed. Some students (maybe many students) may believe that the information on the knowledge organiser is all they need to learn.

    There’s an excellent blog post by Barbara Bleiman about the issues associated with knowledge organisers. Bleiman insists that learning facts about a text is only the starting-point of a process of knowledge. Understanding and skill (Applebee’s “knowledge in action”) are necessary. For Bleiman, the key element is for students to know what is significant in a text (“It is at the heart of what it means to have genuine knowledge in the subject.”). She argues that it is relevant and significant ideas (“points”) that determine successful exam answers or essays. Apparently, it’s not weak writing skills that cause students to do less well in exams but lack of relevant ideas and points to make. Exaggerating aspects such as literary terms distort a student’s understanding and are irrelevant if the student can’t discuss their effects:

    In a nutshell, knowledge of terms and drilling in essay technique are irrelevant if students don’t understand what is significant about a text.

    An agenda for knowledge – organising without false limits

    Bleiman correctly points out that there remains the problem of defining what is “significant knowledge”. (Indeed, my examination of the Macbeth knowledge organisers suggests that there is a variation in what teachers feel is significant about the play.).

    Instead, she offers the concept of the learning agenda which is a means of helping students to recognise what is significant about a text (“to teach students how to make judgements, sift knowledge and decide what to apply to any given text or topic”). Bleiman defines a learning agenda as:

    …a working document, not a definitive, final summary of key aspects but something to be added to and developed over the course of study, with students contributing to its development. It is introduced early in the study of a text, put up on the wall, on a flipchart, or made readily available on a whiteboard, as a shared set of understandings or ideas for the whole class to refer to in the course of studying the text. It starts with some initial observations, perhaps with the identification of emerging themes and stylistic traits, on the basis of a shared reading of the first chapter, or after reading short fragments from the text. The teacher can, at this early stage, tease out significant elements that students might look out for, think about and be alert to as they’re reading the text. It makes the first reading an active one, in which the students are aware of what is especially interesting about this text, in relation to others. As time goes on, in the course of reading and study, more key elements emerge and are elaborated upon. So for a novel this might include the key themes, aspects of style, narrative techniques, voice, methods of characterisation, symbolism and so forth. The ‘agenda’ gradually fills out, and gaps are filled in, so that by the time students do their exams, they have a great, succinct overview of what is important to ‘know’ about that text. Usually the agenda is no more than one to two sides of A4 of headings but behind that is a huge amount of discussion and reference to the text that has led to this synopsis of key ideas.

    An agenda for knowledge – organising without false limits

    What I like about a learning agenda is that it enables students to become actively involved to a certain extent with the way in which the text is studied. It provides the flexibility to explore ideas raised in their reading. The teacher remains in charge and responsible for the overall journey but the process of studying the text like this should enable students to learn how to identify what’s richest, key and of importance in a text.

    Facts about Macbeth – what happens, who the characters are, sequences of events, quotes and terms – are the starting point but the expectation is that students use this information in action rather than passively “retrieve” the information.

    A Learning Agenda for Macbeth

    Here’s my first draft learning agenda for Macbeth. I’m mindful that I have around 25 lessons (30 if I’m lucky) to teach the play. The demands of GCSE mean that there is little time to allow students to “explore” the text and develop a genuinely personal response but I’m going to try my best to allow students develop their skills. It’s a great deal to fit in.

  • Introduction to English and Its Teachers

    Introduction to English and Its Teachers

    Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017)

    Chapter 1 – Introduction

    Simon Gibbons presents the purposes, rationale and scope for this study of the development of secondary school English teaching from the mid-1960s to the present. He defines three periods during this time but agrees that the centralising action of the 1988 National Curriculum was a “watershed moment” and that the loss of teachers’ autonomy has coincided with the deprofessionalisation of subject teachers. Gibbons insists that to be an effective English teacher you need to develop a personal vision based on knowledge of how English is best learned and taught (not simply becoming skilled at delivering pre-prepared lessons or implementing the latest recommended teaching strategies).

    • “This is not a neutral enterprise.” – Gibbons notes that a “basic skills curriculum” aims to reproduce societal norms.
    • Gibbons: “A broader English curriculum that embraces the seemingly ever-increasing varieties of language and dialect, explores how language changes over time, introduces children to the breadth of ways in which they can speak and write in the increasing forms of media available to them, and exposes them to literature from across times and continents and cultures has the potential to do so much more. The links between language development and thought attest to the significance of English in the way it can enable the growth of character, and how in developing linguistics resources children are internalising culture and society.”
    • Gibbons: “Literature, in revealing the worlds, minds, sensibilities and beliefs of writers, allows children to deepen under­ standing of the way they and others live, and pursue fundamental moral, ethical and political questions.”
    • Gibbons defines last 50 years is represented by three periods:
      • mid-1960s to mid-1980s: expansion of English, teachers drew in new technologies, expansion of comprehensive schooling, English teachers were fighting for something, increased attention to cognitive development and psychology, efforts to articulate “overarching theory” for the subject.
      • late-1980s to start of new millennium: advent of National Curriculum, unprecedented central intervention in schools in terms of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy (symptomatic of a global standards-based reform agenda in education), increased marketisation, more fragmented landscape. English teachers fought against central impositions and new models of English seeking a return to more traditional models at the expense of progressive models.
      • mid-2000s and “existing as the status quo today”: “it is tempting to say that the fight has disappeared, perhaps because it is difficult to see where the fight is, how to fight it and to sustain any belief that it can be won. Even if, to an extent, central intervention has become less overtly direct, and even if the landscape now purports to offer schools and teachers more freedom, the legacy of nearly thirty years of top-down reform has been profound deprofessionalisation – leaving English teachers with the underlying sense that the critical decisions about what to teach and how to teach arc no longer theirs to make.”
    • The introduction of the National Curriculum was a “watershed moment”.
    • G. McCulloch – The Struggle for the History of Education (2011) – shows that there have been “competing rationales” within the study of the history of education.
    • Gibbons: “I would argue that to be a genuinely effective teacher of English, one needs more than the ability to implement the most recently recommended teaching strategy or to download the latest inspection-proof lesson or unit of work. One needs to have a clear sense of what English is, what its purpose in the education of children should be, and the ways in which this is best effected in a given classroom, at a given time, with a particular group of pupils. For want of a more satisfactory term, it is about having an underpinning foundation – a philosophy – of the subject and how it is best learnt and taught.”
    • Unless English teachers have a philosophy or ideology then someone else’s philosophy or ideology is “merely enacted rather than understood”.
    • Brian Simon – Education and the Social Order (1991): “things have not always been as they are and need not remain so”.
    • Seminal history of English is David Shayer’s The Teaching of English in Schools 1900-1970 (1972). Shayer’s book published at same time the New English (a progressive pupil-centred model) was beginning to develop as an orthadox method. Shayer optimistic about future development of English.
    • Gibbons not convinced there is “substantial agreement” about a philosophy of English and believes that there has been a deprofessionalisation of teachers that obscures need for personal philosophy. Critical that English teachers adopt a “total view first”.
    • Margaret Mathieson’s The Preachers of Culture (1975) – more far reaching and philosophical than Shayer. Should be required reading for anyone entering the profession.
    • Both Mathieson and Shayer seem to present the development of English in a non-existent or benign policy context (when decisions taken by teachers themselves).
    • Clark – War Words: Language, History and the Disciplining of English (2001) – sets debates in context of political intervention.
    • Effects of centralisation. Gibbons: “Centralisation has almost invariably not been in the hands of subject experts, nor have policymakers often appeared to have a vision of the subject beyond the way in which it can contribute to the overall economic health and competitiveness of the nation, or to the way it might help to construct some notion of Britishness.”
    • Unavoidable to consider English and its teachers in relation to policymakers.
    • Gibbons encourages teachers to consider how English is taught overseas.
    • Michael Barber divided past 50 years into four categories:
      • “uninformed professionalism” (1970s)
      • “uninformed prescription” (1980s)
      • “informed prescription” (1990s and National Strategies)
      • “informed professionalism” (the way forward)
    • Gibbons takes issue with Barber’s division. It does a disservice to many English teachers.
    • Significance of the Dartmouth Seminar in 1966: “an event that helped to shape the subsequent development of English as a discipline in the secondary school.”
    • Pre-1988 and post-1988 are a “absolute paradigm shift” (Goodwyn) in teaching of English. Goodwyn calls it “the era of teacher autonomy to the time of externalised conformity”.
    • Gibbons: “In considering the development of the subject, this text takes a broad definition of this new English as, essentially, a progressive-growth model; under this broad umbrella the unifying factor is that the child and her experience is the starting point for the work of the English teacher.”
    • Gibbons: “The new progressive English, whilst obviously not practised to the exclusion of other versions of the subject, can rightly be seen as a dominant orthodoxy by the time of the introduction of the National Curriculum, certainly in the state education sector.”
    • Gibbons describes period from end of 1980s to early 1990s as “some of the most important teacher-led initiatives into the development of English” and coincided with the imposition of central curriculum and assessment.
  • Introducing Macbeth

    Introducing Macbeth

    The first few lessons on a text – particularly Shakespeare – are crucial. Nowadays the standard modus operandi at GCSE is to start with assessment objectives, pages of (often irrelevant and subsequently forgotten) contextual information and lists of vocabulary or technical terms. Often knowledge organisers are given out before anything else. Groan.

    What is it that should be established during the first lessons of Macbeth?

    • Begin by connecting the start of Macbeth with students’ existing knowledge. Plunging straight into I.i and encouraging students to consider what other texts and media experiences this opening triggers.
    • Explore the musicality and signification of the language. I.i provides a concentrated means of encouraging students to consider different ways Shakespeare is performed – especially how voices can alter the significance of words and lines.
    • Grab attention and create expectancy. Successful teaching of Literature involves enabling students to ask questions about the text. It’s teaching students to learn what to pay attention to. At the start of this play: Who are the witches? What is the hurlyburly? Why is the heath so important? Who is Macbeth (and why is he so important?
    • Contextual information. Yes, there is contextual information necessary but this needs a light touch at this point. Students need a brief (graphical) overview of when Shakespeare was writing. As we are starting with the supernatural and witches, a brief mention of James I at this point is needed (which I’ll return to in terms of succession), that they are “wyrd” and connected to Fate. By the end of the lesson, I’d probably also make sure that I’d defined terms like “Elizabethan” and “Jacobean” and that Macbeth is a Jacobean tragedy.
    • Vocabulary. There are over 30 words I want students to know and use in their responses to Macbeth. My plan is to carefully teach them over the course of the term and review them constantly. The vocabulary for the first lesson will be “malevolent” (with its obvious link to the witches).
    • Enabling “buy in” by students through adopting interpretations. By the end of the first lesson, students should have their “own” opinion on why the scene is important.
    • Atmosphere. Bearing in mind my limited control of the classroom environment, attempting to create a sense of atmosphere acoustically using a soundboard is important (thunder, rain, wind, the cackles of the witches).

    The second and third lessons should review this learning before moving on to ensuring students know the plot of Macbeth. Years ago I picked up the idea from Rex Gibson’s Teaching Shakespeare, that teaching the plot of a play through 10 quotes and drama-based actions really helped in encouraging engagement and familiarity with the text. I’ve found that it works very effectively. I also supplement this with a prose retelling of the play (Marchete Chute’s retelling is my favourite) and the 30-minute BBC Animated Shakespeare version.

    Learning Agenda. I’m going to try out Barbara Bleiman’s advice about adopting a learning agenda rather than a knowledge organiser. I can see the value of knowledge organisers – especially for lower-attaining students but are quite limiting. The Learning Agenda requires some work by me over the next couple of weeks – especially in terms of the key aspects of the text on which students need to focus.

    It means that, after three introductory lessons, students would have:

    • knowledge of the basic plot
    • know the names of the characters
    • appreciate the tone/atmosphere of the play
    • have opinions on the text (“buy in”)
    • learned vocabulary to use in responding to the play
    • have some relevant contextual information

    After that we would move on to I.ii (after, of course, reviewing learning). One of my primary aims while teaching Macbeth this year is to meticulously structure how I teach key knowledge, vocabulary, quotation-retrieval and writing exam answers in a far more holistic fashion. It’s the only way I can ensure that the study of the play remains fun, intellectually and emotionally stimulating as well as preparing students for answering exam questions.

  • A Long, Long Time Ago…

    A Long, Long Time Ago…

    Sorting through old school resources, I found this project from 1997. I was in my second year of teaching and still have memories of making this booklet as a media mini-project for Year Seven.

    The scan of the booklet shows the way in which it was constructed back in the last century: printing sections out on one of the school’s computers and then pasting it all together before photocopying the whole thing and stapling it together manually.

    I can’t recall why I chose Star Wars as the topic. I taught it before the Prequels (possibly before I’d even heard they were in production). I have a vague memory about wanting to teach epic narrative structure – but I may have made that up since. There are attainment targets drawn from the original National Curriculum and quite broad assessment objectives:

    It only got taught once. The students hated Star Wars. I hadn’t appreciated that for them it was an old fashioned film that their dads liked. They also intuitively understood that this was a pop culture that didn’t deserve the same respect as Shakespeare (or even the first Harry Potter which had just been released a few months earlier). The project was a failure and I still distinctly remember one frustrated little girl telling me over and over that she just “didn’t get it” and me getting frustrated and telling her over and over that it was a very simple story. It was a useful lesson learned by me.

  • Why is Shakespeare the only compulsory content area in this year’s English Literature GCSE?

    Why is Shakespeare the only compulsory content area in this year’s English Literature GCSE?

    Amid the controversy over poetry being made optional in the 2021 English Literature GCSEs, there’s been little mention that the examination of a Shakespeare play is the only non-optional component. It’s possible to trace this requirement back to the 1989 Cox Report which is when the first statutory requirement for teaching Shakespeare was introduced. The question I’ve got is why is Shakespeare specifically mandatory?

    Shakespeare has a mythic status in Britain which is difficult to pin down other than a pervading agreement by all that there is something culturally worthy in his writing that schools are expected to teach. Somehow, there is a general consensus that learning about Shakespeare makes a positive (and moral) impact on individuals’ personal growth, contributes to a sense of there being a cohesive national identity and somehow enables economic prosperity.

    When was Shakespeare made so important in schools?

    Shakespeare was first named as an author in the revised Standards of Education in 1882. Sarah Olive in the excellent Shakespeare Valued (2015) says the Victorians associated Shakespeare with a “gold standard” of literacy. For Standard VI, children needed to read a passage from either one of Shakespeare’s Histories, of another standard author or from any history of England. (I find it interesting that Shakespeare is connected with English history right there from this start.) Olive goes on to say: “Shakespeare had, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, been incorporated into a curriculum of sorts and used to demarcate the highest performing students from their peers.” This placement of Shakespeare as a means of discriminating between more and less able children by the Victorians and established the value and nature of Shakespeare in state education.

    Still, why Shakespeare and not any other great poet or writer? Chaucer? Milton? Keats?

    On this train of thought, I wonder the extent of Matthew Arnold’s influence on Shakespeare’s place in the English school curriculum. In Arnold’s The Study of Poetry (1888), he repeatedly makes the case that “Chaucer is not one of the great classics…” Arnold goes on to say that what is missing from Chaucer is the Aristotlian “poetic virtue of seriousness” or “high poetic seriousness”:

    For Arnold, the greatest poets were Milton and Shakespeare. Milton is “the one artist of the highest rank in the great style” and better than Shakespeare in Arnold’s estimation. Milton has a “sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction… No one else in English literature and art possesses the like disinction.” On the other hand: “Shakespeare is divinely strong, rich, and attractive. But sureness of perfect style Shakespeare himself does not possess.” Arnold’s devotion to Milton seems to me to be admiration for the strong sense of Christianity and his belief in the superiority of Greek and Latin which he sees Milton as channelling in English poetry. (In his essay on Wordsworth, Arnold writes approvingly of a comment which suggests that Shakespeare control of rhythm, musicality of language prose, style, expressing interior thought and feeling.)

    For Arnold, it was the sense of consequence which marked great literature:

    The substance of Chaucer’s poetry, his view of things and criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it has not this high seriousness. Homer’s criticism of life has it, Dante’s has it, Shakespeare’s has it.

    The Newbolt Report (1922) – which essentially established English as a school subject in a form that’s recognisable to today – agreed that Shakespeare was necessary but recommended that Shakespeare was taught as extension to all pupils. This echoes what George Sampson had urged in English for the English:

    “Shakespeare is not only difficult but archaic as well; and thus he seems doubly unsuitable for young readers. Fortunately, he is saved for the schools by his wonderful power of re-telling a story in dramatic form and his equally wonderful power of characterisation, and we may add, his incomparable mastery of word-music. Indeed, it is Shakespeare the musician as much as Shakespeare the dramatist to whom we must introduce our pupils.”

    In A Language for Life (1975), the Bulloch Report barely mentioned Shakespeare (once plus a mention in a dissenting note by Black Papers contributor and headteacher Stuart Froome). Bulloch discusses the value of teaching Literature as bringing children:

    into an encounter with language in its most complex and varied forms. Through these complexities are presented the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of people who exist outside and beyond the reader’s daily awareness. This process of bringing them within that circle of consciousness is where the greatest value of literature lies. It provides imaginative insight into what another person is feeling; it allows the contemplation of possible human experiences which the reader himself has not met.

    The Kingman Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language (1988), barely mentions Shakespeare.

    Sarah Olive in Shakespeare Valued suggests that it was the late-1980s policy-makers combined with the amount of pedagogic literature created as a consequence of the introduction of the National Curriculum and the influence of organisations like the RSC, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and The Globe.

    Sarah Olive in Shakespeare Valued (2015) – which is, as far as I can tell, the only major study of why Shakespeare has a central value in education (although limited to the period 1989-2009) – argues that

    The curriculum is silent about what should be achieved through the study of Shakespeare in particular. Standards to which students should aspire in their work are defined across English rather than in relation to Shakespeare: the skills, and increasing quality with which they are to be performed… Furthermore, reasons why Shakespeare might be the most fitting author to make compulsory go unwritten

    It’s an excellent, informative analysis. Early on she cites Michael Bristol’s Big-Time Shakespeare (1996) which examines how the policies of the Thatcher government commercialised Shakespeare and presents the “phenomenon” of Shakespeare as being “collectively ‘generated out of the innumerable small-time accomplishments of actors and directors, advertising copy-writers, public relations specialists, as well as scholars, editors, and educators’”.

    Olive argues that the post-1989 teaching of Shakespeare has been affected by “broader agendas for raising skills, standards and social inclusion” by both Conservative and Labour governments and that they remain united in their attitude that Shakespeare contributes to economic, moral and social growth. She identified Professor Cox, who had been taught by Leavis at Cambridge as responsible for the literary recommendations established in the National Curriculum. She presents him as Arnoldian in his belief that great literature has a humanistic value. Olive claims that Thatcher was not interested in the details other than having a preoccupation with language and “skills”.

    Cox gave far more emphasis to Shakespeare in English than ever before for Ages 5 to 16 (1989):

    Many teachers believe that Shakespeare’s work conveys universal values, and that his language expresses rich and subtle meanings beyond that of any other English writer. Other teachers point out that evaluations of Shakespeare have varied from one historical period to the next, and they argue that pupils should be encouraged to think critically about his status in the canon. But almost everyone agrees that his work should be represented in a National Curriculum. Shakespeare’s plays are so rich that in every age they can produce fresh meanings and even those who deny his universality agree on his cultural importance.

    As far as I’m aware, this is the only official explanation why Shakespeare has the importance in the curriculum that he has today.

    Cox also emphasised an active approach to teaching Shakespeare and other literature:

    Pupils exposed to this type of participatory, exploratory approach to literature can acquire a firm foundation to proceed to more formal literary responses should they subsequently choose to do so.

    Cox didn’t seem to have the same imperative to study Shakespeare in dry, academic fashion we see today and, instead, gave teachers much more professional agency in the manner in which Shakespeare was taught:

    every pupil should be given at least some experience of the plays or poetry of Shakespeare. Whether this is through the study, viewing or performance of whole plays or of selected poems or scenes should be entirely at the discretion of the teacher.

    He also insisted that Shakespeare should be taught as drama:

    pupils should approach plays through the dramatic medium. This exploratory and performance-based approach will not only lead to a deeper understanding of the text in question (a dramatic exploration of a speech in Shakespeare, for instance, will show how the placing of different emphases can alter fundamentally one’s interpretation of character or meaning) but will also lead to an understanding of the play as theatre. Performance-based activity may, of course, take place at classroom level, in small-scale improvisational sessions or in text work. Where practical, however, pupils should be encouraged to take every opportunity to widen their experience of audiences and/or co-actors. The mounting of school productions and active involvement in community or touring theatre initiatives are thus of immense value.

    The Warwick Evaluation noted that teachers felt that the National Curriculum had altered their teaching of Literature by increasing the amount of literature-based activities and ensuring the SAT requirements were met. This included teaching plays by Shakespeare. Teaching the required Shakespeare play in Year 9 was related as taking up a great deal of time (and caused them to abandon schemes of work in order to prepare children for assessments – I remember this well!).

    The 2004 revised NC prescribed: “two plays by Shakespeare, one of which should be studied in key stage 3”. In the early 2000s, the newly-founded AQA English GCSE syllabus included Shakespeare as a coursework “crossover” piece whose “task should enable candidates to demonstrate their understanding of, and engagement with, at least one play by Shakespeare studied during Key Stage 4… it must allow the candidate to demonstrate awareness of social and historical influences, cultural contexts and literary traditions which shaped Shakespeare’s writing and/or which have influenced subsequent interpretations of his work.” The form or genre was not prescribed and enabled students to respond to characters, specific scenes or specific performances. Unthinkably – from today’s standpoint – students could present their knowledge and understanding orally. It was made clear that any answer needed to show “sufficient evidence of textual knowledge”.

    Some attempts were made in 2008 to encourage a more active and considered approach to Shakespeare in 2008’s Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages but this remained vague about why. I’ve written about it here.

    More recently, things have largely shifted towards the approaches to teaching Shakespeare focus purely on securing exam results. Practices which would have been condemned as encouraging “unsympathetic attitudes to literature” (see below) for nearly a century of English teaching are currently all the rage.

    Am I surprised that no one has even asked why Shakespeare is considered the only compulsory element of next year’s GCSE English Literature? No, not really.

    Shakespeare in Exams

    My understanding is that Shakespeare has been used as a mechanism of assessment in secondary schools since the Second World War. The type of questions in this paper remain similar for the next fifty years: a number of short-answer questions about details of plot and character followed by a longer question requiring the candidate to respond to the whole text. This 1957 exam paper shows the sort of responses expected of candidates for O-level.

    Up until the 1970s children would either paraphrase passages or identified characters and aspects of plot. This approach was replaced by passages for close analysis based on a detailed knowledge of the play (I would imagine this was a response to the impact of the followers of Leavis like David Holbrook and Peter Abbs). This far more analytical approach was made “open book” so children had access to a text in order to show critical appreciation.

    Changes in the 1970s seem to be a focus on the requirement to “refer to words” in longer answers. In a 1974 London exam board O-level paper, the longer Macbeth questions were:

    ‘Security is mortals’ chiefest enemy’ Write a short paragraph explaining what this line means. Then show in what ways the truth of this statement is illustrated, by referring to the words and behaviour of both Macbeth and Duncan.

    Trace the stages by which Lady Macbeth becomes gradually less dominant during the course of the play, making clear your changing feelings towards her as the play progresses.

    In the 1980s, O-level Shakespeare seem to have been a similar mixture of short answer questions about specific details from a play (eg. “What two things has Caliban told Stephane to do in order to destroy Prospero (line 30)?”) and longer answer whole-text responses, for example on Macbeth:

    Re-read the last part of Act 1 scene 3 from the point where the witches disappear (line 79) to the end of the scene. Write about the different ways in which Macbeth and Banquo react in this scene. How does the relationship between them develop as the play continues?

    1984 English Literature O-level, Cambridge Examinations

    In the report on the 1984 English Lit O-level, the examiners insist that:

    “The question of direction is a fundamental cause of concern. The vigour and thrust of this paper stems from an intention which should be present in the teaching and at all stages of approach to literature: to enable people to read with perception, thought and sensitivity but without predetermined directions. In setting questions we still have a good deal to learn about how to open questions freely without implying directions to candidates about ‘approved’ ways of thinking.”

    (As an aside it is incredibly frustrating to compare the way that the report disparages the “unsympathetic attitudes to literature” developed in the manner in which children were prepared for CSEs and O-levels. These are the self-same approaches currently lauded in our exam-fixated English classrooms.)

    What Shakespeare has and is actually taught?

    Based on looking at which plays were taught for exam, it looks like following World War 2, Richard II and The Merchant of Venice were chiefly set. (It’s worth pointing out that children were also required to read Chaucer – another indication that Shakespeare did not have supreme importance in the Literature curriculum). In the 1970s tastes changed to Macbeth and Twelfth Night. In the 1980s, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear to be the favoured texts.

    In a recent issue of English in Education, Victoria Elliott and Sarah Olive surveyed teachers and discovered that Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were the most taught plays up to GCSE. In sixth form the choice of plays were:

  • Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages

    Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages

    In 2008 – during the era of the various National Strategies – the Department for Children, Schools and Families in collaboration with organisations like the QCA and RSC produced Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages, not only a booklet giving guidance on the teaching of Shakespeare in schools but what it variously describes as a “framework of opportunities” or even a “map of opportunities”.

    Don’t groan when you see the pun in the title, though. It seems to have been unintentional.

    It’s noticeable that it begins by asking the question “Why Shakespeare?” and immediately finds difficulty in articulating why Shakespeare is so essential for teaching in schools. Instead of celebrating Shakespeare’s humanism or literary qualities, the booklet places Shakespeare’s economic value and world-standing as of primary importance:

    His work is at the centre of Britain’s twenty-first century theatre industry, is constantly adapted for film, has been translated into hundreds of languages and is performed throughout the world today.

    Shakespeare’s other purpose is in enabling social and political considerations:

    Watching, performing and reading the work of this extraordinary poet and playwright asks us both to challenge and celebrate our social and personal lives. Shakespeare can open up brave new worlds to young people and offer them fresh ways of dealing with familiar ones. His work can challenge our language skills and introduce us to new realms of poetic playfulness. He can extend our concepts of what fiction can do, and of what stories a drama can tell. Working with Shakespeare can be challenging but is eminently rewarding, rich and fulfilling.

    Why Shakespeare, though? Why Shakespeare is elevated to importance above other writers isn’t addressed. Why not Chaucer? Milton? Keats? Is it because Shakespeare wrote more surviving plays than his contemporaries? (Shakespeare does seem to win by the numbers: Shakespeare: 40, Middleton: 30+, Jonson: 20+, Marlowe: 17, Fletcher: 16+, Webster: 9). The “Why Shakespeare?” question isn’t answered at all. Instead we’re to be dazzled into teaching Shakespeare by his reputation and “relevance”.

    The booklet gives a “framework of opportunities” in which “significant experiences” are recommended. Perhaps this booklet was aimed more at primary teachers as many of the “significant experiences” it suggests would be fairly routine in secondary schools: studying the plays, watch a production, use dramatic approaches to explore the plays.

    Bearing in mind this was produced during the great era of objectives of the National Strategies, the “opportunities” are transformed into year on year objectives:

    After that there are “Suggested Teaching Approaches from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 4” which are linked to strands of the primary and secondary Literacy Frameworks.

    Many of the teaching approaches are based on encouraging younger children to consider texts in terms of literary heritage. For instance, Year Seven students should be taught “To engage with some of the issues, themes and ideas in Shakespeare’s plays and to appreciate the way they remain relevant in the 21st century”. It suggests that Year Eight students should be taught “To understand how characters’ actions reflect the social, historical and cultural contexts of Shakespeare’s time”. Another is “To understand the cultural significance of Shakespeare and his place in our literary heritage”.

    In Years Nine and Ten there’s a focus on characters, dramatic conventions and language but, in Year Eleven we’re back with the “relevance” of Shakespeare. The objectives for Year Eleven are “To understand the significance of the social, historical and cultural contexts of a Shakespeare play” and “To appreciate the moral and philosophical significance of Shakespeare’s plays and their relevance for a contemporary audience”.

    There are interesting ideas in the booklet for English teachers to use – particularly active approaches – that encourage students to consider the play as a drama (for example, sculpting a scene or creating models of stages). Bearing in mind I’ve just read a book where practical learning tasks are disparaged in favour of “knowledge instruction”, lots of the ideas are quite refreshing and a reminder that the philistine and rote-driven teaching which dominates English lessons at the moment doesn’t need to be this way.

    Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages can be downloaded here.

    Macbeth

    There are some teaching suggestions for Macbeth provided in the booklet:

    • “Hot-seating a character at a moment of dilemma, for example, Macbeth after the murder of Duncan. The teacher might be hot- seated by pupils first in order to model the process before moving on to thought tracking whereby pupils can be taken from ‘public answers’ to more private responses in order to reveal the differences between what a character says and what they might really think.” (Year 3)
    • “Giving pupils the opening scene of Macbeth, perhaps on the whiteboard, and practise chanting the lines together with them. Show pupils images or extracts from one or two productions to see how the witches have been portrayed. Ask them how they would portray the witches and ask them to act out the scene in groups of three. Compare the different presentations, and encourage each group to explain why they presented their witches in a particular way.” (Year 3)
    • “Taking a play with a strong theme, e.g. ambition in Macbeth and helping pupils to explore it through a familiar scenario, e.g. “Have you ever been temped to do something that you knew was wrong because you wanted something very badly?” Ask pupils to explore this through discussion or role play before exploring it in the context of the play.” (Year 6)
    • There’s a description of a cross-phase project at Larkmead School based on Macbeth which involved simple drama work, storyboards and use of software (Kar2ouche) for children to animate scenes.
    • “Taking a significant scene from a play and exploring its various interpretations in two or three different film versions. Possible film versions include Macbeth (Polanski’s 1971 version and the RSC’s 1979 version starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench)… Explore the effect and impact on the viewer created by each interpretation by considering the decisions made by the director with regard to setting, costumes and how actors play their parts.” (Year 7)
    • “…focus on modern parallels to some of Shakespeare’s key themes, for example, by: …How far would I be prepared to go to get something I really want? (Macbeth)” (Year 7)
    • “Exploring the very real belief in witches and their malign influence as portrayed in Macbeth (James 1 had taken part in the interrogation of witches and believed that they had attempted to drown him on a sea voyage). Ask pupils to contrast the reactions of Macbeth and Banquo to the witches in Act 1 Scene 3 or explore Lady Macbeth’s reaction to her husband’s letter in Act 1, Scene 5.” (Year 8)
    • “Placing the name of a key character on the wall or screen and annotating it with quotations which focus on his or her feelings and state of mind at key points in the play. This activity is best applied to a character who undergoes change or development from the beginning to the end of the play: Prospero from The Tempest is a good example as are Macbeth and King Lear.” (Year 9)
    • “Exploring some of Shakespeare’s villains, such as Iago, Macbeth, Richard III, Don Pedro, Claudius, etc. As a starting point, take a character from the current play who might be considered a villain and place him or her on a continuum with other Shakespearian villains, from those whose evil seems inexplicable to those who are more complex, flawed characters to those who are likeable rogues. Tease out the nature of the villainy in the character in the core play. Notions of leadership, heroines, outsiders etc could be similarly explored.” (Year 10)
    • “Putting a character on trial, involving every member of the class in various ways, e.g. as a character witness, as an expert witness, as a victim of the defendant, etc. Invite pupils to make creative links with other plays, e.g. by transposing the doctor in Macbeth to stand as an expert witness for Othello or Hamlet. This might form part of a piece of speaking and listening coursework as well as a response to Shakespeare.” (Year 10)
    • “Investigating Shakespeare’s treatment of his source material and the way he adapted it for dramatic and artistic reasons, e.g. Richard III was a successful soldier and popular leader, a patron of the Arts; Macbeth was actually a good king who reigned in Scotland for many years. Pupils might write in role as Richard’s or Macbeth’s lawyers, demanding a retraction of the damaging portrayal of their clients.” (Year 11)
    • “Using whole class and group discussions and strategies such as ‘conscience corridor’, ‘walk of fame’ and ‘walk of shame’, encourage pupils to explore the moral issues that underpin the play they are studying. Build up a working wall display on these issues and allow pupils to annotate the display with quotations or their thoughts on characters’ actions that exemplify these themes. Encourage them to make connections with films, novels, and popular TV series, e.g. the parallels with the downfall of Macbeth and Darth Vader in their pursuit of power. Pupils could write the obituary for their chosen character using evidence from the play to demonstrate how their actions, their attitudes and what other characters have said and feel about them, reveal their moral position and how it is contrary to the good of society.” (Year 11)
    • “Asking pupils to identify the characters that represent moral or philosophical perspectives or could be seen as a moral touchstone for the themes of the play, e.g. Banquo and Macduff in Macbeth, Polonius in Hamlet or Cordelia in King Lear. Pupils might plan and present a 15-minute version of This is your Life using other pupils as characters who talk about the star of the show and their exemplary life.” (Year 11)