Category: English teaching

Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021)

Introduction

David Didau offers a third way that appears to reconcile the traditional and progressive strains within English teaching. He notes how English does not have an agreed body of knowledge or purpose. Didau believes that changes to the academic study of English have impacted badly on it as as school discipline as has a loss of agency (and conviction) by its teachers. His proposition is that English should be reimagined and its focus on teaching children how to determine significance.

• Didau begins be pointing out that “The anxiety that there’s something rotten in the state of English seems as old as the subject itself.” Then goes on to explain how English has altered while he was a teacher: from one which taught creativity and empathy, attainment targets and drilling to, recently, building stores of knowledge about literature and grammar.

• Didau asks: “in the rush to reinvent the subject as ‘knowledge-rich’ there’s a risk that self-expression, empathy and meaning may be thrown out along with the admittedly filthy bathwater.”

• He discusses the nature of English as a school subject: “unlike most other school subjects English does not consist of an agreed, settled body of knowledge. We take our guidance from examination boards. We dwell on the detailed knowledge of a very few canonical texts and attempt to teach and assess a generic set of skills in the forlorn hope that this will equip young people for the vicissitudes they will face in life. But if this is not enough, if our students need more direction in navigating an uncertain world, we are often unprepared to guide them in making meaning.”

• “At some point” Didau argues in the last 50 years, academic English altered and “the pendulum swung too far” in favour of presenting all discourse as having equal worth which he admits “enlivened and enriched” English but “eroded” our subject’s self-understanding.

• He sees this change in the nature of the academic study of English as affecting those teaching English: “As English teachers we were left not just lacking expertise, but lacking conviction. Until recently, discussions about what to teach were sidelined by injunctions on how to teach. The curriculum became the business of exam boards and quangos; English teachers were shut out of the debate. Now, with a renewed focus on the curriculum, we are often unsure where to start or how to proceed. If we have been trying to build on a foundation of uncertainty we shouldn’t be surprised if the resulting structure is rickety.”

• His fear is that “English is in danger of becoming a clockwork version of itself with children learning lists of quotations and tables of techniques but with little sense of how to use these facts to create meaning.”

• His argument becomes that there is a “third way” between teaching “skills” and what he calls the “technocratic grip of the knowledge organiser” and quotes Arthur Applebee (and the idea of the English curriculum as conversation) saying that what needs to be taught in English is “knowledge of a tradition that involves both knowing and doing”.

• At the end of the Introduction, Didau sees the role of the English teacher as enabling students to “enlarge and extend” meanings in literature and language.

• “The aim is to reimagine English as a subject concerned primarily with significance… to reconceive the curriculum as a place where old and new ideas clash, where the canon is wrestled with, and where students are given the intellectual wherewithal to impose their own judgements and meanings on what we lay before them.”

“How many rich kids are there in your Year 10 bottom set?” asks Phil Beadle at one point in The Fascist Painting. He doesn’t need to present a reciprocal question about Eton or other public school. For teachers aware of the social inequities of the school system in the UK, Beadle’s explosive argument about the purposes of state education, drawing on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as well as his own experiences as a classroom teacher is incredibly insightful and refreshing. In places it’s challenging – especially when Beadle explains Kantian aesthetics or bluntly dismisses the positive influence of sport in schools – but the value of the book lies in the way it voices an alternative approach. It’s a breath of fresh air for teachers like me who want schools to overcome the hyper-normal mentality that they are politically neutral and that that by focusing everything on the attainment of a handful of GCSE grades we’re somehow contributing to a vague sense of social mobility.

Those who are the poorest, most disadvantaged in society benefit the least from school. For the Right, it’s because these children come from communities where “culture” and “knowledge” are absent supposedly. These children, the Right would argue, lack the desire for self-improvement that’s associated through an advancement of “cultural capital”. It’s no surprise that in neoliberal Britain, the acquisition of “culture” is seen in starkly economic terms. The origins of the current push for the dissemination of “cultural capital” are, as Beadle points out, found in the (ongoing) Govean Revolution that seeks to import the traditions and cultural practices of the dominant monied classes in English society into state schools. (Beadle is far too forgiving here about the influence ED Hirsch has had in my opinion.) By the end of the book – which draws its title from Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a painting admired by the Nazis as exemplifying the fascist mindset – it’s clear that Beadle sees “cultural capital” as part of a darkly totalitarian agenda to strengthen ideological control over the working class. To teach oppression.

Using Bourdieu’s concepts of culture and its complex relationship with social structures, Beadle stridently examines the manner that cultural ideas are introduced into state schools. Cultural capital, he points out, is not morally neutral and is rather a means that the ruling ideas of society are legitimised. It’s a “veiled mechanism” through which systemised inequality is perpetuated. Schools and the curriculum play a fundamental role in this. (No wonder politicians like Halfron and Johnson use terms like “signed in blood” and “Big Bang” to insist on a mass return to schools in early March during a pandemic where England suffers the worst record of contagion and death in the world. It’s more than a need to get kids back to school so that parents can get back to work. It’s an awareness that prolonged break from schools is a prolonged break from the dissemination of the ideas and control of their dominant culture.)

Beadle spends the first part of the book reflecting on the origin of the phrase “the best which has been thought or said” and there’s some (perhaps correct) character assassination of Matthew Arnold at play. Beadle refers to T.S. Eliot and Anthony Harrison who present Arnold as second-rate, “insider” and deliberate obfuscator. Beadle notes that Culture and Anarchy, the collection of essays from which the phrase “the best which has been thought and said” is drawn is unreadable (it’s “borderline incomprehensible”). Beadle describes the backdrop of the collection as the “anarchy” of the period leading to the 1867 Reform Act, where urban working class men were given the vote and quotes John Storey’s claims that Arnold believed that “In Short, education would bring to the working class a ‘culture’ that would in turn remove the temptations of trade unionism, political agitation and cheap entertainment. In short, culture would remove popular culture.” Arnoldian culture uses mass education as a means of ensuring working class “subordination, deference and exploitation” and equates cultural power of culture with the power of the state.

Beadle believes – and has argued elsewhere – that those in OFSTED have confused “cultural capital” with “cultural literacy”. He rightly points out that Hirsch’s cultural literacy has been interpreted as a form of cultural recognition rather than rich experience and understanding. His view it that Hirsch tends to see mainstream culture as morally neutral when it is far from the case. Mainstream culture is itself a form of legitimisation where (largely) what is popular is considered good. Beadle is particularly effective at pointing out that it is who chooses the content of the cultural knowledge that is crucial. Beadle treats Hirsch far too gently, even when pointing out where Hirsch misrepresents Bourdieu’s impact on French educational reforms. (The difference between cultural recognition and actual cultural knowledge is valid and we see it for example in practice where knowledge organisers remain required in many schools and used as quizzing for rote learning.)

By using the term cultural capital, OFSTED misunderstands Bourdieu’s “willed oxymoron”, Beadle argues. Pairing “culture” with “capital” Bourdieu draws out the unseen relationships between these two concepts. Beadle views OFSTED as quoting a concept created to satirise what it is they think they mean. Beadle goes on to examine Bourdieu’s concept of “misrecognition” and, further, identifies school as “the chief site of symbolic violence” – a place where ruling ideas are legitimised.

Behind apparently neutral “cultural capital” is the legitimising of qualities that the ruling class want working class children to acquire: “honour, loyalty, allegiance and, above all, obedience”. It’s a culture based on a mindset which believes that what has endured is worthwhile without any analysis of how and why this culture has endured.

Beadle also examines what “culture” actually signifies. For Raymond Williams, “Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English Language.” For Bourdieu it is the “supreme fetish”. Beadle draws on this in order to show how the acquisition of culture is seen as providing means of becoming upwardly mobile. However, in order to mobilise yourself upwardly, you have to submit to the game of culture and the class structure it upholds. I found his explanation of Bourdieu’s concept of “obsequium” clarifying: those at the bottom of the order have a respect of the order deeply programmed into them.

Additionally, Beadle explores the definition of “capital” and how the mainstream, dominant ideology presented by the ruling class, state and mass media is legitimised as being THE only valid ideology and that cultural hegemony is a tool in which to manipulate society’s beliefs. (Perhaps anyone who questions this should ask why anti-capitalist views are now proscribed in English state schools.) Cultural competence itself is a symbol of economic value.

Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus is explained, too. Beadle insists that class heritage does not need to be rewritten to develop habits of self-cultivation. The wealthy can afford to spend the (money) time on self-improvement (embodied cultural capital). He also raises the spectre of the Matthew Effect in culture and states clearly that “Education cannot heal society” or reverse the Matthew Effect of cultural capital. Cultural capital also carries markers of origin.

One of the strengths of The Fascist Painting is in how Beadle shows how the education system reproduces the economic system. He asks a simple question to show this: does your local school have the same prestige as attending one of the great public schools? Elite institutions are filled with confident members of the economic elite. The education system is a “huge classificatory machine” that forms the basis of the social order.

Later in the book Beadle looks at “disinterestedness” as an ideological tool. There’s some incredibly interesting chapters on Art and Music and Beadle shows how the dominant classes establish a denial of the physical world (and, of course, its social realities) through Art. Eventually, he discusses Kantian notions of the sublime and how it manifests in the “pure gaze” (which is itself another ideological mechanism for establishing domination).

Throughout, the Fascist Painting explodes with ideas and incredibly enlightening observations. For instance, Beadle shows how ideas of character education have their origins in the public schools of the rich and today are used to contrast with the need to teach working class children “resilience” (he argues that working class children are already pretty resilient). He’s rightly dismissive of the promotion of so-called social mobility agendas as a “Trojan horse” distracting us from the causes of inequality. He also calls for “Sport should be disentangled from its place in schools”. His arguments about sport seem to me to be sound – but it could be argued that sport, even if you take into account its commodified and nature – brings a great deal of joy to children. Beadle also makes a great deal of sense when explaining why working class children don’t read.

Beadle’s message in the book isn’t to reject and work against “cultural capital” being taught in schools. Instead, it’s how to use the methods and tools of the dominant class’ oppression to reveal the nature of oppression: “What is required is training in the rules of the game”.

Beadle’s vision is that:

“Schools should be about emancipating young people, not teaching them the validity of the blunt instruments that are used to control them. Or is that the real function of school? To introduce you to things that will stop you questioning the things they are introducing you to?”

Simply, the task “is to develop [students’] sympathies with political movements and ideas that aim to help them to lead lives less marked by poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity”. The purpose of education is to reveal the existence of the dominant culture, show the tools of domination so that the working class can use them to defend itself.

Towards the end of the book, Beadle presents his manifesto. It rejects the Kantian (what strikes me more as Nietzchien!) notions of “disinterestedness” that dominates current dominant culture and schooling. Beadle examines the nature of the class nature of “disinterestedness” throughout the book. In terms of the school curriculum, this is what he advocates:

“Here is your manifesto: the arts civilise everyone who has contact with them. What is required is a redrawing and a quiet politicisation of the arts curriculum in which the thinking is more critical and acknowledges that there is no such thing as a ‘view from nowhere’, as well as the introduction of more elements of legitimate culture that do not currently appear in state schools.”

Essentially, the actions of this manifesto would be:

1) respect existing working class culture
2) expand the arts
3) then introduce ruling class culture.

His “cultural curriculum” would be one that essentially uses the structure of The Fascist Painting (this book) as a map. Bourdieu is to be taught, too, though Beadle admits this would likely be a unit in an English or History scheme of work. (There’s a great deal of humour throughout even here where his idealistic remapping of the curriculum is brought down to Earth. He’s a teacher. We’ve all been there.)

There’s a fundamental role for a teacher other than a neutral mechanical conduit of “knowledge” (I guess in the way that teaching’s currently framed in the Rosenshine or Cognitive Load models): “We do this by devoting ourselves and our students to discovering the intentions hidden behind the objects and actions of those who seek to dominate us. We do not succeed in emancipating our students by becoming the dominators ourselves. Cultural capital gives us a fighting chance at giving our students the tools they need for their own fight against the many oppressions and oppressors they will experience in their lives – in time present as much as in time future.”

Beadle’s advice to working class children is a quote from John Lydon: “Get smart, read as much as you can and find out who’s using you.”

Here and there are things Beadle presents that surprised me and seem at odds with the tenor of the book. For instance, Beadle says that he supported Gove’s “toughing up of qualifications”. Beadle believes: “this was long overdue and entirely correct”. Though he acknowledges it comes with its own form of bigotry. Surely an examination system that classifies children so brutally isn’t something to be “toughened up”! Rather, shouldn’t the current exam system be replaced by one in which cramming, private tuition and a place in a grammar or public school doesn’t assist you in getting the best grades (this is aside from the fact that students attending public schools are allowed to take exams accepted by universities that are prohibited for state schools students)? Beadle also commends the teaching of Aristotelian rhetoric and texts like abridged versions of Classical Greek texts as virtues. Aristotelian rhetoric seems to be another guise of approaches like explicitly teaching the fronted adverbial in a formulaic way and, while I’m sure that these scaffolds of discourse can be useful, I don’t think they fundamentally alter the issues with the way English is taught in schools. I’m also hesitant about the use of contemporary (pop) culture in the seemingly uncritical way that Beadle proposes. [I’ve taught poetry paired with pop songs for years but I wouldn’t want to suggest that Stormzy, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift has an equivalent artistry with Shakespeare, Blake or even Matthew Arnold himself.] I’m not even sure teaching Ancient Greek texts is progressive when there’s a greater body of world literature to draw from.

These are minor criticisms of what is a significant educational book.

The Fascist Painting is an explosive and challenging alternative approach to delivering “cultural capital” in schools. It draws attention to the nature of the dominant culture and its role in the legitimisation of social inequality. Beadle offers a manifesto for schools for delivering “cultural capital” in a way that reveals the tools and methods of its use and re-tooling it for the working class.

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

In this chapter Gibbons presents the changes to English during the period of the 20 years-long Conservative government. His starting point is the 1988 Kingman Report and the introduction of the National Curriculum, the first attempt at prescribing the context of English teaching. It was a centrally-driven, top-down reform. This is the period where English teachers’ influence over policy waned and there developed a growing sense of deprofessionalisation. It saw the removal of 100% coursework and the introduction of national testing at 14.

• Introduction of the National Curriculum in late 1980s and subsequent action saw the “progressive, personal growth model of English” come under attack from both Left and Right. The relentless pressure caused fundamental changes to the way English was “framed” and taught. Those resisting change were marginalised.
• “The dual weapons of curriculum and assessment, reinforced by an increasingly oppressive accountability framework manifested in school league tables, perfomance targets and Ofsted inspection, threatened for many English teachers what they considered to be the good practice that had evolved through previous decades.”
• ▾ THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR ENGLISH
  • Callaghan’s Ruskin College speech in 1976 seen as the “starting pistol” for “the long race towards the first National Curriculum”.
  • Abolition of the Schools Council in 1982.
  • “where there was a focus on education in the early years ofThatcher’s administration it was predominantly on
    advancing policies that would serve to bring the market into education, and to lessen the influence and scope of the Local Education Authorities”
  • Not until 1988 Education Act that “the spotlight was shone directly on curriculum”
  • In mid-1980s, HMI published Curriculum Matters papers (“forerunners to the National Curriculum”). Gibbons claims these were “in many ways strikingly imaginative in their approach to curriculum” and that the ideas were “in no way at odds with the kind of progressive, child-centred model of English that, for many, had by the mid-1980s assumed the place of an orthodox approach to the teaching of the subject”. Points out that one pamphlet regarded English as an “art”.
  • English from 5-16 had an “open and democratic tone”.
  • English 5-16: “In terms of the development of a National Curriculum for English, then, this
    was no bad starting point. The pupil was being placed at the very centre of learn­ing in the subject, the complexity of the discipline was acknowledged and there was a strong sense of consultation and communication in the development of what
    might at some point become policy. As the National Curriculum became a reality, however, this democratic spirit seemed to be steadily eroded; relatively quickly
    policymakers seemed to realise that, in terms of English at least, dialogue with the profession would be unlikely to lead to consensus, and it would be even less likely to lead to an agreement on the kind of version of the subject that successive Conservative governments apparently wanted – a back-to-basics approach that would reverse the perceived, but never really evidenced, fall in standards which, it
    was alleged by those on the right of the political spectrum, accompanied the introduction of progressive methods from the 1960s and was a product of comprehensivisation.”
• 
  ▾ THE KINGMAN REPORT
  • Sir John Kingman chaired report committee. Kingman was a mathematician. President of the Royal Statistical Society. Committee did consult widely. ▾ Kingman report’s recommendations included:
  • training of all new teachers in knowledge about language
  • all NQTs should engage in a language study relevant to their subject specialism
  • called for establishment of a National Language Project (came to fruition in LINC).
  • Department of Education’s response was to call report “interesting”.
  • NATE welcomed report but saw its conception of language as inadequate. Also challenged the prescriptive view of language teaching (citing no evidence). [Stubbs says that there is little evidence that direct language teaching improves children’s English.] NATE concerned that study of language for its own sake in a crowded curriculum would prevent children developing competence as language users.
• 
  ▾ COX’S NATIONAL CURRICULUM (1988)
  • Kingman Report “quickly superseded” by English for Ages 5-16, the first version of the NC.
  • Statutory orders drafted by committee led by Prof Brian Cox (one of the key authors of Black Papers).
  • Suggests that Cox had some sympathies for progressive education. “it was clear from English for Ages 5-16 that Cox’s view on English showed some real appreciation of the complexities of tire subject and of varying perspectives held by the profession on the aims of English and what it should be to children”. ▾ Cox encapsulated complexities of aims of English as “views” which became “Cox’s model”:
    • personal growth
    • cross-curricular
    • adult needs
    • cultural heritage
    • cultural analysis
  • Shakespeare given only statutory place
  • Document was a mix of prescription and descriptive. “It invited English teachers to consider these debates and in doing so reassured them that there was not an attempt to simplify the complexity of the subject”.
  • “In fact, Cox considered that the ideas on teaching English from Bullock, Kingman and his own curriculum could be seen as ‘an organic growth’ (Cox, 1995, p. 190). If that were indeed true then Cox’s curriculum would rightly be looked on as progressive and, to a large extent, in tune with the progressive ideas about English that had been evolving over theprevious three decades.”
  • “many English teachers now view the Cox curriculum as a humane and principled attempt to set out both an inclusive rationale for English and a broad and balanced subject content, with many italicised sections of the document offering helpful guidance to support the statutory orders”
  • Harold Rosen – Teaching London Kids (magazine) – opposed to “this” National Curriculum.
  • NATE welcomed aspectes of English 5-16, particularly how it handled standard English – but criticised circumscribing performance in English with a linear scale of levels. “The progressive view of English adopted as NATE’s orthodoxy viewed the English curriculum as recursive, a spiral curriculum where children continually return to key ideas and concepts and deepening understanding.”
  • “In a sense, that Cox’s curriculum was widely
    welcomed by the profession may have been as much due to a sense of relief at what it wasn’t as a celebration of what it was, and the affinity’ to Cox’s view of English was no doubt heightened by subsequent events – the passing of time and future curriculum rewrites certainly influenced many English teachers’ judgement of Cox and his curriculum.”
• 
  ▾ PASCALL’S THE CASE FOR REVISING THE ORDER (1992)
  • Policymakers quickly revised the English orders.
  • National Curriculum English: The Case for Revising the Order (1992). Gibbons describes it as “a curious read”. “There are clear messages in the document about the areas of English Cox was deemed to have failed in properly forefronting; the teaching of initial reading and the specification of named literary figures featured, but once again attention to grammar and Standard English remained the strongest areas of criticism.”
  • Brian Cox – Cox on the Battle for the English Curriculum (1995).
  • Cox pointed out that ministers gave key positions in the NCC and SEAC to supporters of conservative thinking on education (John Marenbon, Sheila Lawlor and John Marks – members of the Centre for Policy Studies). Gibbons points out that Cox is not unbiased in his accounts and attempts to salvage his own reputation and legacy.
  • David Pascall, “a chemical engineer” oversaw drafting of new orders.
  • “The contrast between the Pascall and the Cox curricula was stark; the earlier document highlighted the complexities and ambiguities of the subject, whereas the latter offered certainties, perhaps most wonderfully encapsulated in the heavily value-laden
    and deeply questionable assertion ‘Standard English is characterised by the correct use of vocabulary and grammar’”.
  • Pascall’s view was more in tune with ministers: a back-to-basics approach to reading and writing, speaking and listening.
• 
  ▾ THE DEARING REVIEW (1993)
  • Consultation process suggested that English teachers were largely satisfied with Cox version of NC.
  • “The changes it generated were minimal – the
    most notable was probably the simplifying ofthe writing attainment target so that the proposed separate strands for ‘grammar’, ’spelling’ and ‘punctuation’ were
    removed. Embedding the technical elements of written English into a broader notion of written composition was a welcome reversal, but the final draft was not
    so vastly different from Pascall’s. However, the knowledge that things could have been worse may have muted the protests that resulted on its publication.”
  • 1995 version of NC was slimmed down. No introductory paragraph on the purposes or aims of the subject.
  • Now a prescribed list of authors introduced.
  • Subject associations claimed that their views were not being listened to. A cosmetic exercise.
  • According to Cox only one practising English teacher on the SCAA English consultative committee. (There were others: advisors and head teachers.)
  • The “givens” of the revised NC were: grammar/standard English, literary canon, Shakespeare and bilingualism.
  • Chris Woodhead denied there had been ministerial interference in the final order (anonymously authored).
  • “Despite the apparent lack of enthusiasm for the curriculum rewrite, and despite the many objections to the new programmes of study, there was no particular
    protest as the orders were phased in during the mid-1990s. This may have been because English teachers considered that they would be able to sustain good practice in spite ofstatutory orders, or it may have been an indication ofthe erosion of the
    profession’s belief that any power it had to influence the direction of policy was being steadily eroded.
• 
  ▾ LANGUAGE IN THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM PROJECT
  • “The story of the LINC project is perhaps the most astonishing example of the Conservative government’s
    attempt to control the teaching of English language in schools, and a striking example of their failure to do this in the face of an English teaching community
    that – whilst it may not have been intentionally subversive – was not going to accept any simple approach to the teaching of grammar and Standard English.”
  • LINC set up under the direct control of the DfE and materials to exemplify the Kingman model of language.
  • “The grand plan, however, failed spectacularly.”
  • John Richmond – Unstable Materials (English and Media Magazine): mistakes: appointment of Ron Carter and to allow LEAs to have a say in the appointment of experts to lead LINC work (resulting in a “ragbag of people of the worst sort”).
  • LINC materials split into two sections covering topics like: early language, the process of writing, accent dialogue and standard English and multiculturalism.
  • “The materials offered a comprehensive and complex view of language and its forms, and it’s certain that a teacher engaging with them would have their own subject knowledge for teaching enhanced. Sadly, the majority of English teachers did not have the opportunity to access the LINC project training. Despite revisions made by Ron Carter, the government took the decision not to publish the final LINC materials, and further than that it refused to
    waive its copyright, thus meaning that interested commercial publishers would not be at liberty to run with the material.”
  • DfE did allow the LINC material to be used in-service education.
• 
  ▾ ASSESSMENT BATTLES
  • “it was assessment that brought English teachers and the policymakers into direct conflict in the 1990s”
  • 100% coursework removed in 1994.
  • National testing for students at 14 was due to be introduced in 1993. Ken Baker set up the Task Group on Assessment (TGAT) in 1987 chaired by Paul Black.
  • TGAT report in 1987 stressed need for national testing to be predominately formative. Warned against using data for league tables.
  • English tests Anthology was a significant issue. “Clearly significant numbers of English teachers felt this imposition of a hand-picked collection of texts was an affront to their own professionalism, and that it had the potential to very radically change the nature of classroom practice and the curriculum.”
  • Gibbons says that the Anthology was something “a particular type of educated conservative thought it would be good for children to read”
  • Testing of Shakespeare through focus on s single scene and levelling children’s achievement also contributed to English teachers’ anger.
  • LATE led campaign. Brian Cox claimed: “teaching to get high marks in the SATs will be bad teaching”.
  • Unions took over campaign and called for boycott on grounds of workload. John Hickman argues this was a mistake.
  • Boycott’s effects: Anthology disappeared, John Marenbon chair of SEAC resigned.
  • Boycott viewed as a short-lived victory by English teachers.
  • “The boycott of Key Stage 3 testing demonstrated English teachers could still
    wield some collective power. This would not be allowed to happen again. The LATE-inspired campaign to boycott the SATs remains, however, the last teacher-led
    movement to effectively cause a change in policy. For that, if for nothing else, it should be celebrated.”

–

–

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”.

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”

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.