Teaching

Indicators of an Effective Teacher?

27/02/2022

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Digging through one of my boxes of stuff, I found this copy of Elizabeth Perrott’s 1982 Effective Teaching, a book I’d bought and intended to read but had put away for the future. It’s a weirdly prescient book: outling many of the approaches to teaching that are currently being promoted in schools. According to the book, Perrott was the director of the International Microteaching Unit at the University of Lancaster. I guess the term “microteaching” captures the general pedagogical approach to classroom practice in schools at the moment.  I’m particularly taken by the question of what are the indicators of…

Talk for Learning

08/06/2021

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Notes from A Dialogic Teaching Companion by Robin Alexander (2020). Chapter 2 – Talk for Learning In this chapter, Alexander explores the relationship between talk and the development of a child. He examines the shift in the 1970s between the child as “lone scientist” to “apprentice”. The persistence of recitation and the typical oral classroom interactions are explored. Alexander goes on to explain the research-supported positive benefits of classroom talk. Much of the chapter is given to the way in which talk has been stigmatised by politicians and has been now largely removed from the school curriculum, despite the evidence…

Prologue to A Dialogic Teaching Companion

06/06/2021

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Notes from A Dialogic Teaching Companion by Robin Alexander (2020) Chapter 1 – Prologue In the Prologue, Robin Alexander gives a case for teaching talk as an essential tool in teaching and learning. He describes the positive value of dialogic teaching and asserts that there is a strong evidence base for using dialogic approaches. He presents his involvement with oracy since the 1980s. Alexander goes on to consider the broader civic value of dialogic teaching in what he terms a “collision of discourses”. Alexander broadly identifies the benefits of dialogic teaching for students and teachers. ” Dialogic teaching is both…

“build a ladder of opportunity so that the able can get ahead”

02/06/2021

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Provocative New Statesman article by Adrian Wooldridge which insists that the key to the “reinvention” of the Labour Party is by going back to basics – appealing to the “new working class that is growing alongside the old one” – and reinstating a belief in meritocracy, “the belief that individuals should be treated according to their own merits rather than their family connections or membership of various pre-determined groups, and that the state’s job is to build a ladder of opportunity so that the able can get ahead regardless of where they are born”. Wooldridge almost exclusively focuses on education…

To Coalition and Beyond: Back to the Future?

23/05/2021

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Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017) In Chapter 6, Simon Gibbons brings the book up to date (to 2017 which – after Covid 19 and the lockdowns – seems an age ago). He presets a largely bleak and somewhat dispiriting picture of current English teaching in schools which Gibbons feels has suffered under 20+ years of direct government intervention. He points out some small attempts at presenting alternative approaches to teaching English – Looking for the Heart of English, John Richmond’s proposals and a (new) National Writing Project – but the his summation of the state of…

Writing Wrongs, TES

22/05/2021

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Great article in this week’s TES about the teaching of writing. Liz Chamberlain (Open University) and Rob Drane (English subject lead at the University of Cambridge) argue that writing is being taught in primary schools causes “a disconnect between how we view writing in the real world, and how writing is taught in schools. And, in some classrooms, this is having a detrimental effect”. Chamberlain and Drake assert that the complexity of writing is too frequently reduced to separate components/threads – transcription, composition, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation – when it is actually a “complex and personal process”. They refer to…

New Labour, New Policies

08/05/2021

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Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017) In Chapter 5, Gibbons focuses on New Labour’s impact on English. The Labour government sought to tackle the underachievement of poorer children. This was when I started teaching and remember all too well the exhausting period of the National Strategies. Gibbons examines how schools were directed to look at boys’ performance, the radical impact of the National Literacy Strategy on primary schools and its KS3 counterpart (objectives-led lessons with a focus on non-fiction genres). The impression given is that the £4 billion Strategy had limited impact. Finally, Gibbons presents the…

Problems in English

07/03/2021

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Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021) Chapter 2: Problems in English This chapter defines English as a “folk discipline” where its teachers have limited understanding of effective approaches. Didau dismisses “skills-based” teaching and, instead, proposes a “knowledge-based” approach. He also shows concern that students practise the wrong things. Much of the later part of the chapter involves examples of approaches to teaching aspects of English. Didau focuses on the issue that “we don’t have a codified body of knowledge of how to achieve these aims” of how English should be taught. He suggests that “English has…

What is English for?

04/03/2021

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Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021) Chapter 1: What is English for? This chapter presents the current state of English, drawing on its history as a school subject to explain how and why English seems “lost” as a school subject with teachers ignorant of its past and the triumph of pragmatism (functional) English over any progressive or idealistic aspirations for the subject. It’s effective in showing how confusing central government has been on teaching. (It’s interesting that Simon Gibbons or Margaret Mathieson aren’t in Didau’s bibliography as they present the history of English teaching from different…

Introduction to Making Meaning in English

02/03/2021

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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…

“Capital Punishment” by Danielle Jones (TES, 20210226)

26/02/2021

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“Cultural poverty is not the pressing priority,” Danielle Jones argues in a TES article. It’s economic disadvantage. Jones refers to Bourdieu and briefly draws a connection between wealthy families and possession of cultural capital. She believes that OFSTED’s interest in cultural capital has an “unarticulated assumption, therefore, is that economic and social capital plays a lesser part – or can be less pivotal – in this life success.” Her argument seems to be that it is possible to separate different forms of capital (social, economic and cultural) and questions how equitable our education system actually is when the wealthiest benefit…

The Fascist Painting: What is Cultural Capital? by Phil Beadle (2020)

21/02/2021

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“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…

Standardisation? The National Curriculum and Assessment

14/11/2020

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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…

Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design: Recent Developments (2003) by Fred Paas, Alexander Renkl and John Sweller

30/10/2020

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This is a text that I’ve seen repeatedly referenced online as an important introduction to CLT. After reading it, I’m not convinced that this is the best place to start with learning about CLT. It’s the introduction/editorial for an issue of Educational Psychologist and gives a broad overview of the state of CLT and its relationship with instructional design in 2003. It briefly defines key elements such as intrinsic cognitive load, extraneous cognitive load, germane cognitive load, working memory, expertise reversal effect and schemas. These are my reading notes on the article: “By simultaneously considering the structure of information and…

Generative Learning in Action (2020) by Zoe & Mark Enser

28/10/2020

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Generative Learning in Action is refreshing after the heavy doses of Rosenshine I’ve been consuming recently. There are two aspects to the GL approach I find particularly engaging: it approaches learning from the learner’s perspective rather than that of the instructor (the “flip-side” that the Ensers repeated point out) plus it’s a constructivist theory which insists that learning is mediated through the prior experiences and knowledge of the learner (it’s great to see Piaget referenced these days!). The theory leans heavily on Mayer’s SOI (select-organise-integrate) model of memory which is presented early in the book. It also draws on Cognitive…

The Goalkeeper’s Revenge and Other Reminiscences of English

19/09/2020

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This morning I was talking with Alice about my experiences of school. We’d been swapping anecdotes about childhood as you do when you get older and try to discern some sort of pattern in those early years that led to where you end up as an adult. It’s all a bit Dockery and Son (and I continually worry how much influence Larkin had on me in my late teens). Anyhow, it led me to think hard about my own experiences of English at secondary school. Most of it is forgotten, mostly vague memories and a few vivid recollections. I went…

Questioning Rosenshine’s Principles

12/09/2020

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In search of the real Rosenshine In the 4th September 2020 issue of the TES, Jessica Powell argues that Rosenshine’s principles are “poorly understood”. In the article, Powell describes her initial sense that the principles are “straightforward, uncontroversial” and a framework of approaches that most teachers are already doing. The danger, she suggests, is that the 10 principles become a quick-fix or checklist for senior managers. Powell speaks to Tom Sherrington and Mark Esner (a teacher and TES columnist) who argue that Rosenshine permits teachers to teach in ways that seem intuitively right. Esner sees critics of Rosenshine as “radical…

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

28/08/2020

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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 –…

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

27/08/2020

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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…

Macbeth: Prose Retelling

25/08/2020

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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…

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

24/08/2020

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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…

Knowledge Agenda for Macbeth

23/08/2020

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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…

Introduction to English and Its Teachers

23/08/2020

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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…

Introducing Macbeth

18/08/2020

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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…

A Long, Long Time Ago…

15/08/2020

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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…

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

11/08/2020

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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,…

Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages

10/08/2020

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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…

Rosenshine’s Principles in Action

03/08/2020

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Notes from Rosenshine’s Principles in Action (2019) by Tom Sherrington This is the first of my notes from three books about Rosenshine’s principles. The two most useful aspects of this book are the way in which Sherrington organises the 10 principles into 4 strands (though he rightly emphasises that the principles overlap) and that they are not a checklist for lesson observations. He insists that each school subject should consider how the principles apply rather than being confined by their imposition. INTRODUCTION Sherrington: “On first reading, I was struck immediately by its brilliant clarity and simplicity and its potential to…

Preaching to the Converted: on reading Margaret Mathieson’s Preachers of Culture

30/07/2020

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Partly out of a sense that I don’t know enough about the origins and history of my subject and a desire to clarify what it is I believe an English teacher should be, I’ve just finished a detailed reading of Margaret Mathieson’s Preachers of Culture. Preachers of Culture: A Study of English and Its Teachers, published in 1975, charts the development of English as a school subject and the construction of its “diffuse” ideology. It’s a fascinating read and provides a valuable account of the differing attitudes towards English as a subject. Mathieson explains the origins of English from basic…

Interest and Enjoyment: Teachers and Pupils

30/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 14 – Interest and Enjoyment: Teachers and Pupils The final chapter of the book considers the role of pupil engagement and classroom relationships in contemporary (1975) approaches to English teaching (particularly in areas of creative writing, use of media and oral discussion). Peter Abbs – English for Diversity – asks why English fails to be taught “freely, honestly, joyously”? Quotes Edward Blishen (1971): “There must surely be some such explanation. The flow of books cry­ing for a new approach to English teaching never ceases: yet the dark fortress of…

The English Teacher’s Role: Strain and Conflict

29/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 13 – The English Teacher’s Role: Strain and Conflict In this chapter English is presented as placing its teachers into stressful and vulnerable roles due to its diffuse nature and conflicting ideologies. Mathieson: “This chapter suggests that progressive English teachers are likely to experience strains and tensions that are more severe than those felt by other members of staff.” Gerald Grace – Role Conflict and the Teacher – “Grace’s research showed that the greatest pro­fessional confidence, that is the least role conflict, existed in those teachers whose aims were…

Social and Academic Background of Teachers

28/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 12 – Social and Academic Background of Teachers This chapter examines the social background of English teachers and the impact this had on the ideology of the profession. English teachers have historically been drawn from working class and lower-middle classes with lower academic attainment and a restricted cultural knowledge. This has been unhelpful in promoting sufficient professional confidence and emphasised personal rather than academic excellence. Creative teaching: Cecil Reddie at Abbotsholme Caldwell Cook at Perse School Contributors to Newbolt Report seemed puzzled by inability of teachers to be transformed…

Changing Views of the Good English Teacher

27/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 11 – Changing Views of the Good English Teacher This chapter considers the different qualities which have been demanded of English teachers. Mathieson argues that the development of English teaching from basic skills into Literature, creativity, growth through linguistic competence and socio-linguistic engagement with personal and social problems the definition of a “good” English teacher has turned towards individual personality. Mathieson: “This book has tried to show that specially high optimism has been invested in English as the subject most likely to achieve desirable results. It has, throughout its…

Socio-Linguistics: English and Social Justice

27/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 10 – Socio-Linguistics: English and Social Justice This chapter presents the recent (from 1970s perspective) high value placed on children’s oral participation and its link with the sense of social justice and the relativism of modern linguistics. The teaching of “oracy” is presented as being akin to developing children’s personal development and social competence. Recent enthusiasm for encouragement of children’s classroom talk has origins in progressive theories (particularly value of child-directed learning), Cambridge School has opposed passivity by giving support to personal engagement. 1944 Education Act and move towards…

F.R. Leavis and Cambridge English

25/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 9 – F.R. Leavis and Cambridge English This chapter presents the influence of F.R. Leavis, I.A. Richards and the Cambridge School on English teaching in university and schools. Like the progressives, they distrusted industrialism and believed that society’s quality of life was at stake. They particularly disparaged cinema, television and the cheap press. The teachers they required were to be “warriors” who would cultivate a critical discrimination in children. For Leavis and Richards, critical skills were a form of morality and would save culture (and society). Leavis tightened the…

Progressive Theories Since the 1920s

24/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 8 – Progressive Theories Since the 1920s This chapter discusses the burden placed upon English teachers by progressive educationalists. The responsibility for reviving a genuine folk culture was added to the Newbolt Committee’s demands for a liberal education for all. Acceptance of progressive theories – which emphasised children as artists – was added to the developing ideology of English. Educational innovators were few in Britain and identified with small eccentric schools or low-status infant and junior stages. R.J.W. Selleck in English Primary Education and the Progressives 1914-1939 (1972). Progressives’…

Anti-industrialism: The Claims for Literature and Creativity

23/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 7 – Anti-industrialism: The Claims for Literature and Creativity This chapter argues that current (1970s) definitions of English in schools have been influenced greatly by the anti-industrial tradition in literature and literary criticism. The belief in an idealised rural past which was superior to the urban present encouraged educators to seek opportunities in the school curriculum to compensate for this loss (of a fulfilling organic agricultural life). Influential writers and critics viewed modern life with increasing hostility. The burden of enabling a sense of personal fulfilment through creativity was…

The Newbolt Report and English for the English

22/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 6 – The Newbolt Report and English for the English This Chapter presents the 1921 Newbolt Report‘s dissatisfaction with the classical curriculum and its failure to “humanise” more than a privileged few. The Report and George Sampson’s English for the English strengthened the idea that English in schools had the unique power to improve character and change society. Both the Newbolt committee and Sampson saw liberal culture, self-development through art and the native language as being provided for the whole nation through English. It was made clear that English…

Progressive Theories and Creativity

21/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 5 – Progressive Theories and Creativity This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By 1921 English as a school subject had moved beyond the view of great literature as a civilising agency to include the oral and written creativity of children. This chapter describes how European and American ideas about child development influenced teaching in Britain and the position of the child at the centre of the classroom. By…

Literature and the Threats from Commerce

20/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 4 – Literature and the Threats from Commerce This chapter briefly presents the fears about the corrupting influence of cheap press and film in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Support for study of English Literature long before its acceptance by Oxford and Cambridge because it was seen as a subject that could protect its readers from the corrupting effects of cheap fiction and newspapers. It was hoped that English Literature would provide experiences which would lift pupils above the commercial world’s crude sensationalism. D.J. Palmer has studied…

Matthew Arnold

19/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 3 – Matthew Arnold This chapter presents the influence of Matthew Arnold upon English. Matthew Arnold was committed to the idea of a central educative subject that would “form the soul and character”. Arnold expressed views about education “in tones of religious intensity” and passionate conviction. Arnold saw social unrest of 1860s-1870s as a product of cultural crisis that required a literary culture in schools. He was troubled by the “external” nature of Victorian society: competitive, materialistic, practical, complacent. Worship of scientific progress threatened religion. Saw a wave of…

Essays on a Liberal Education

18/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 2 – Essays on a Liberal Education This chapter briefly examines the influence on English studies of Dean Frederic William Ferrar’s 1868 collection, Essays on a Liberal Education. A pdf of a scan of Essays on a Liberal Education is available at the Internet Archive. Essays on a Liberal Education made “very high” claims about the benefits of studying English Literature though still assume the superiority of the classics – this perpetuated “social divisiveness” up until 1921 Newbolt Committee. Teachers presented as “missionaries of culture”. Although there was some…

The Curriculum Debate

17/07/2020

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Notes from The Preachers of Culture by Margaret Mathieson (1975) Chapter 1 – The Curriculum Debate This chapter presents the central issues of the nineteenth-century debate between supporters of classical and scientific studies and argues that the underlying assumptions and manner in which the debate was conducted affected the way in which English studies was first advocated. Mathieson sums up the debate: “For a century and a half then, from the dissatisfied middle class who wished to enter public schools and universities and transform them to accommodate their needs, from the radicals who insisted upon the inclusion of useful knowledge,…

What Matters in English Teaching

03/07/2020

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Over the last few months I’ve read Barbara Bleiman’s recent book, What Matters in English Teaching as well as taken two courses organised by The English and Media Centre led by Barbara. Her 2019 Harold Rosen Address to the NATE Conference is rightly insistent in its demands to broaden an increasingly prescriptive view of English as a subject. I’ve found her thinking influential in a number of ways. It’s introduced me to the theories of Arthur Applebee and the ideas of the curriculum as conversation which emphasises knowledge-in-action, where – for instance – children must discuss Literature rather than be…

Cultural Capital: “Slippery and Complex”

05/03/2020

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Another excellent piece by Barbara Bleiman. Here, she challenges the current interest in teaching “cultural capital”. For Bleiman, it’s a complex thing that – as she shows – is difficult to pin down: cultural knowledge is almost without limit, that you can’t teach it all, that it depends on which texts you’re studying, that it doesn’t need to be exhaustive but just enough to illuminate the text, that many texts provide their own cultural knowledge – they are, in fact, the way in which students absorb that knowledge. If all of this is true, it has profound implications for how…

Teacher Enthusiasm and Reading

05/03/2020

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This is something I am super-interested in. Yesterday, I watched this video, a presentation in February to the Leonardo at 500: Boosting Creativity in Education by Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills for the OECD: The overall presentation concerns creativity in schools. Schleicher provides a great deal of data to argue that developing creativity and collaboration in young people is vital in order to prepare them for the ever-automised future we face. Two aspects of his talk really interested me. He uses the PISA 2018 data to show that countries which emphasised collaborative approaches to learning showed better reading…

Curriculum: The Influence of ED Hirsch

21/02/2020

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https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/best-practice/curriculum-the-influence-of-ed-hirsch/ Greg Sloan is head of Media Studies at Haggerston School. He challenges the way that the ED Hirsch-styled cultural literacy is being imposed by central government. As an alternative Sloan proposed bespoke local curriculum cultures. Sloan questions why the academic arguments for a National Curriculum have “simply disappeared” and asks whether “a narrow band of cultural literacy champions in the Department for Education” have been allowed to decide what is taught to young people. Sloan quotes the then schools minister who describes how after the 2010 election civil servants were confronted by politicians wielding copies of the American core…

49% of adults in UK do not read books!

13/02/2020

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Blame tv, blame radio, blame social media and video games if you want. The fact is that nearly half of the adult population haven’t read a book within the last year, according to research by Kantar Media. just 51% of adults in the UK read at least one book in the previous year. Not only is this a decrease from 56% in the prior year, it also means 49% – essentially half – of adults in the UK didn’t read a single book in a full 12 months. The article I read argued that there was a correlation between three…

Vocabulary. Tiers (not tears).

14/01/2020

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I’m interested to find out the actual origin of language tiers. At the moment there is an interest in vocabulary as a panacea for improving exam performance. As an English teacher I’m thoroughly supportive of improving children’s knowledge of language and literacy. Where I have my concerns is in the seemingly whole-scale adoption of a very mechanical, often decontextualised means of developing language skills. It suits non-English trained school managers as it’s an easy-to-comprehend method of tackling low levels of literacy. Obviously enabling children with a wider vocabulary will improve their educational performance. Obviously. Instinctively, my assumption is that the…

“Intelligent Education” or the Panopticon?

07/08/2019

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Terrifying article on Sixthtone.com about the use of “intelligent education” technology being developed in Chinese classrooms. The Chinese government is actively promoting an extensive AI programme, the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan (NGAIDP), spending $150 billion to incorporate AI into every aspect of Chinese society. The article presents accounts of how cameras are being used in classrooms not only to monitor and analyse what children are doing (as well as their attitudes and emotional states) but also to read what they are writing. The degree of surveillance is quite astonishing. One particular system is called the CCS (Complete Care…

“Learning” and “Path-following”

30/07/2019

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I’m reading Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful The Old Ways. Early on he connects learning and path-following: The relationship between thinking and walking is also grained deep into language history, illuminated by perhaps the most wonderful etymology I know. The trail begins with our verb to learn, meaning ‘to acquire knowledge’. Moving backwards in language time, we reach the Old English leornian, lto get knowledge, to be cultivated’. From leornian the path leads further back, into the fricative thickets ofProto Germanic, and to the word liznojan, which has a base sense of ‘to follow or to find a track’ (from the Proto-Indo-European…

TES English Podcast: How to improve writing in secondary

23/07/2019

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My notes from recent TES Podcast where English teacher, Chris Curtis (Learning from My Mistakes blog and new book How to Teach English and former Whovian) offers some great advice teaching writing. The TES gives an overview of his ideas in the podcast. Encourages a degree of emotional detachment as a teacher (eg. conversations about mistakes; “if we live in fear, we’ll never push the boundaries” He identifies three issues confronting the teaching of writing: “beige writing” – students write very standard answers. Students default to “waffle mode”, a comfortable form of writing. Needs to be challenged. fluency – some…

English in Education, Summer 2019

24/06/2019

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It’s a Literacy-focused issue. John Hodgson’s editorial explores briefly the definitions of literacy and suggests two paradigms exist: one as the functional, autonomous ability of a child to read; the other: …involves reading the world and reading the word… and connects personal response and social awareness. Hodgson cites the work of the New London Group and the concept of “multiliteracies” in the 1990s – and this becomes the touchstone for the various discussions on literacy presented in the issue. I found the following articles incredibly interesting: Literacy Constants in a Context of Contemporary Change by Margaret Mackey – using Professor…

English in Education, Spring 2019

20/06/2019

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Writing is the theme of this issue of English in Education. It’s an excellent collection of thoughtful pieces by English teachers and academics. The editorial sets the tone immediately: Trying to develop excellent writing pedagogy in a system dominated by standardised, politicised assessments makes the task even more challenging. The editorial, by Dr Jenifer Smith and Dr Mari Cruice, points out how the importance of the “primacy of meaning” in children’s Writing has been downgraded over the last 30 years. Towards the end of they make the point that teachers are looking back to the writing of educators from the…

Teaching English, Summer 2019

14/06/2019

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The latest issue of Teaching English, N.A.T.E.’s magazine, dropped through our letterbox this morning and is a always a welcome insight into the best thinking of English teachers’ professional association. It’s a magazine I always look forward to reading. The theme of this issue is using self-research to develop classroom practice. Among the articles, I found these ones most interesting: ICT: Opportunity Missed by Trevor Millum – an article that examines what’s happening to the use of digital tech in English classrooms. Millum says the “over the last 10 years, ICT has been undergoing something of a crisis in English…

The Great Pedagogical War is over? Huh? Since When?

13/06/2019

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The other day I was sitting in a staffroom browsing through the April 2019 edition of Teach Secondary. My attention was drawn to an article by Ben Newmark, Whose Curriculum Is It, Anyway?, in which he argues that “the Great Pedagogical War is over” and that “‘what’ has beaten ‘how’“. A little like the recent series in the TES, Newmark seems to believe that those working in schools are now engaged in some sort of post-revolutionary process of redefining what it is they are actually teaching in schools. I’d agree with some of Newmark’s more general points, especially when he…