What I ‘Know’: Literary Studies and the Teaching of English

This essay unfolds through a series of juxtapositions, involving storytelling and writing of a more analytical nature. In thinking about what I ‘know’ as an English teacher, my aim has been to present my ideas in a form that might do justice to the contradictions and complexities of my professional life, including my continuing efforts to negotiate a pathway between the rich particularities of the educational settings in which I have worked and my knowledge and values as an English teacher. My primary focus is on how my literary education has shaped and been shaped by my work as an English teacher vis-à-vis a devaluing of teachers’ disciplinary knowledge that has occurred through standards-based reforms. I attempt to make the standpoint from which I am writing an object of scrutiny, thus producing an account of what I ‘know’ that arises out of my work as an English teacher and returns to it as a necessary dimension of a politically committed praxis.     

The paradigmatic hearts of subjects which their ‘English’ flows through

Much research into the use of corpora and discourse to support higher education students on pre-sessional and in-sessional courses champions subject specificity. Drawing on the work of writers such as Bakhtin [(1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by MM Bakhtin (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press] and Voloshinov [(1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language (L. Matejka, & I.R. Titunik, Trans.). New York: Seminar Press. (Original work published 1929)], in this article we extend this research by showing how the specific subject ‘context’ is fundamentally linked with the ‘English’ used within it. We first detail some of the literature related to corpus and genre studies and discuss some of the literature related to the importance of providing a context for language. We then present and discuss data from 21 interviews and five focus groups with subject lecturers to illustrate how the ‘English’ used in the subject areas of ‘Design’, ‘Nursing’, ‘Business’ and ‘Computing’ subjects flows through what we term their ‘paradigmatic hearts’. By ‘paradigmatic heart’ we mean the set of values, beliefs and perceptions that represent the central or innermost engine of the subject, through which its ‘English’ flows. In ‘Design’ the paradigmatic heart is ‘visual’, ‘philosophical’ and ‘persuasive’; for ‘Nursing’ it is ‘emotional’ and ‘empathetic’, yet also ‘technical’; for ‘Business’ subjects it is ‘income generating’, ‘numerical’ and ‘persuasive’; and for ‘Computing’ it may be ‘visual’, ‘numerical’ or ‘code-based’. We demonstrate how ‘English’ flows through the paradigmatic heart of its subject and that to remove the ‘English’ from its subject paradigmatic heart changes its nature. Thus, we argue that if students are not being taught ‘English’ in the context of the subject, the ‘English’ we are teaching them will be different, and that preparation and support needs to be undertaken in the subject itself.     

Touchstones as sprezzatura: the significance of attachment to teacher literary formation

A touchstone is a smooth dark stone that, when rubbed against gold and silver, proves the metal's quality. Figuratively, it has come to signify ‘that which serves to test or try the genuineness of anything’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Here I consider why certain literary ‘touchstones’ of teachers are more formative than others. This leads to an exploration of the close association between the aesthetics of literary response and the sprezzatura of childhood reading. The pedagogical question of involving teachers and teacher educators in critical reflection on their practices should begin with these formative stories.     

‘Who's this Tong‐il?’: English,culture and ambivalence in South Korea

Many supporters and critics of a ‘global English’ assume that English is (initially) ‘outside’ of cultures in what Braj Kachru calls the ‘Expanding Circle’. But this ignores the ways English has been culturally and historically constituted in countries where it is still a ‘foreign’ language. In South Korea, English education—as an institution—has been part of Korean life since the 1880s. During that time, English has acquired a variety of contradictory cultural meanings related to the colonial and postcolonial experiences of South Korean people. For example, although introduced as part of the late‐nineteenth century ‘enlightenment’ of Korean society, English became associated during the Korean War with conservatism and the US military government. More recent beliefs surrounding English suggest a combination of liberatory possibility and imperialism. Through an examination of historical sources, literature and ethnographic interviews undertaken from 1999 to 2001, I describe some of these shifting meanings as relevant not only for our understanding of English in South Korea but for world Englishes as a whole. ‘Global English’, I suggest, must be understood as both global and local.     

‘Coherence at Last’: Percival Gurrey’s Contribution to English

Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling ‘poetic devices’. Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when psychology dominated educational discourse, he was in touch with new developments in both literary criticism and linguistics, and he evolved a bridging theory of language, learning and development that spanned philosophy, psychology and literary theory. I connect Gurrey’s sense of wholeness of response to his reading in Coleridge. By returning to debates surrounding Coleridge I show how a new appreciation of what language accomplishes emerged. Gurrey discovered that writing has a central place in children’s development as a whole. From such hard-won discoveries a unified theory of development in talking, reading and writing duly emerged.     

Missing Something: A Review Essay on Joseph North’s Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History

ABSTRACT

This is a review essay of Joseph North’s Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History. I interrogate many of North’s claims, most notably his argument about the way a shift from literary criticism to literary scholarship has blunted the capacity of people working in literary studies to engage in a socially critical praxis. I use his book as an occasion to explore the relationship between literary studies (as ‘knowledge’) and the meaning-making that occurs within English classrooms when students engage with the texts chosen for study. I argue that North’s failure to make connections between English teaching and the literary critical projects of people like I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis and Raymond Williams ultimately limits the reach of his book. For each of these critics, literary criticism was deeply embedded in an educational project that extended far beyond the confines of the academy, and their literary criticism might usefully be reread in these terms.     

The didactics tradition in South Africa: a reply to Richard Krüger

There has been a growing interest in the European Didaktik tradition as part of a process of ‘internationalizing’ curriculum studies. Krüger provides useful insights into some aspects of Didaktiek in South Africa. However, the essay does not contextualize this tradition within the broader history of South African education. This reply contends that Didaktiek was interwoven with ‘fundamental pedagogics’ and as a consequence played a role in reproducing apartheid ideology—it did not provide a language of critique or possibility. This is one reason why the tradition has seen its demise in post‐apartheid South Africa. I argue that curriculum theory, which crucially deals with the relationship between schooling and society and highlights the socially constructed nature of schooling, offers a more useful alternative for critiquing apartheid education policy and for charting a process of transformation of education in South Africa.     

Learning English as an L2 in the Global Context: Changing English,Changing Motivation

As the English language has become a global lingua franca today, it is not surprising that changes in attitudes and perceptions towards learning English in the international context have taken place at the same time. In this paper, I critically examine the notion of ‘integrative motivation’ in the literature of second language (L2) learning with respect to the changing role of the English language in the global context. In particular, this paper attempts to re-conceptualise the notion of integrative motivation by considering the results of recent empirical research on L2 motivation. It is argued that the predominant motivation of learning English among most L2 learners is no longer concerned with ‘integration’ in the target native English-speaking culture, but with the construction of a ‘bi-cultural’ or ‘world citizen’ identity, as well as identification with the international community. The paper ends by suggesting new ways of understanding the concept of motivation in L2 learning in today’s global context.     

Language,discipline and ‘teaching like a champion’

This article presents an analysis of various language policy mechanisms currently circulating in secondary schools in England, with a particular focus on those that intermingle ‘language’, ‘standard English’ and ‘discipline’. Although the connections between language, ideology and behaviour are well established within critical educational linguistics, this has not been explored in relation to current education policy in England, which is characterised by an overt focus on standardised English and behaviour ‘management’. In a grounded approach, I explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body, based on ethnographic-orientated fieldwork undertaken in a London secondary school and drawing on a broad range of policy mechanisms such as curricula, textbooks, classroom artefacts and Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion industry. I show how the current linguistic conservatism found within government policy gets reproduced in school-level policies, pedagogies and classroom interactions, and highlight these relations within a network of policy actors and key terms associated with so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘no-excuses’ schools. I show how teachers are positioned as language policy managers who work within a system of surveillance, compliance, coercion and control. As such, this article contributes to current thinking within critical language policy and the sociology of education by offering an expanded view of language ideologies in schools, whereby connections between language and discipline are explicitly illustrated and critiqued.     

Literary English and the Challenge of Multimodality

How to understand and argue for the nature and place of literary texts and experience in contemporary English curriculum has been and continues to be the subject of much debate. While literature as traditionally conceptualised remains an important presence in much English curriculum, the notion of what ‘literature’ is, or what the category of ‘literary’ texts and cultural forms might encompass, in a context where literacy is understood as multimodal and English and literacy curriculum addresses multimodal literacies accordingly, is less clear. This paper addresses two areas with respect to literature and literature teaching in the digital age: first, issues surrounding the ways in which national curriculum guidelines in England and Australia envisage the teaching of literature, in principle and in practice; and second, the challenges presented to print-based conceptions of literature and literature teaching within English by significantly broader conceptualisations of literature encompassing a range of aesthetic multimodal texts and forms. The kinds of insights, experience and understandings generated through the study and creation of literary and aesthetic texts in English, it is argued, are now needed more than ever. However, as literary experience becomes increasingly transmodal, how English seeks to manage media shift to encompass both print and digital forms remains a challenging issue.     

Reading/Writing Multilingualism: language,literature and creativity in the multilingual classroom

This article examines the relationship between the discipline of ‘English Literature’ and the contemporary multilingual classroom. It argues that, although our field has often been cast as a kind of corrective to the ‘problem’ of language diversity by helping to teach language norms, literature can – and should – be made a preeminent space for students to reflect on their own experiences of language diversity, and to translate this into self‐reflexive critical tools to think about language in literature. As an example of this kind of practice in action, the article discusses the experience and outcomes of a project in the English Literature department at Queen Mary University of London, Reading/Writing Multilingualism, which involved year 10 and 12 students from two local secondary schools who have English as an additional language.     

Making Sense of Close Reading

The term ‘close reading’ is problematic for English teachers, yet a heightened awareness of the role that language plays in mediating experience and social relationships is fundamental to an informed and critically engaged citizenry. This essay finds that a focus on abstracted ideological content of literary texts comes at the cost of material, aesthetic considerations of language or ‘literariness’: it is the baby that has been thrown out with the bathwater. The essay argues that a false dichotomy between a literary education as ‘cultural studies’ and the study of ‘Culture’ (with a capital C) has diverted attention from the relationship between words and meaning. It draws on the work of Raymond Williams in contending that a renewed concept of ‘close reading’ should be at the heart of English teachers’ professional practice.     

Against the corrosive language of Corpspeak in the contemporary university

Many universities today are businesses, embracing the priorities and values of any other consumerist enterprise. There is an argument that, insofar as the phenomenon of marketisation is a function of what (Michaels, F. [2011]. Monoculture: How one story is changing everything. Red Clover Press) terms a global economic ‘monoculture’, these developments are inevitable. Nevertheless, this article argues against such rhetoric that embraces the neoliberal principle of unrestrained growth and that has public universities adopting a business model, applying managerialist approaches, measuring and – most importantly in the context of this article – expressing worth and purpose in corporate terms, as these prioritise commerce over the cultivation of creative and critical thought essential to healthy social functioning. It argues for an educational environment that enables multiple ways of seeing, thinking and living to flourish. The particular focus is on the deleterious effects of corporatising language within universities. I reflect upon how this language is used to express notions of value and to shape identity. In (Fairclough, N. [2004]. Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge) phrasing, texts ‘have causal effects upon, and contribute to changes in, people?…?actions, social relations, and the material world’; thus, I examine language-based conceptual inadequacies, misrepresentations, and what Bourdieu terms ‘unconscious inclusions’ – within many contemporary universities. I then consider what style of language, what other attitudes and approaches, actually support the university as a learning place with a specific cultural role, rather than presenting it as another ‘multi-output organisation’.     

Reading,engagement and higher education

ABSTRACT

This article explores the close association between higher education and reading. I draw on the resources of literary studies to illuminate the phenomenon of educational ‘engagement’. I explore the accounts of reading offered in the phenomenological literary theory of Rita Felski and Marielle Macé and extend their ‘stylistics of existence’ into higher education to elaborate engagement’s ‘eventful’ character: it is not in the power of teacher or student to ‘bring about’ engagement. In place of pedagogical ‘method’, I demonstrate how Padraig Hogan’s treatment of education as the ‘courtship of sensibility’ is consistent with this phenomenological treatment of engagement. I am thus able to illustrate how engagement is in tension with instrumental approaches to teaching and learning. I conclude by offering an ethical relation of mutual belonging to subject matter as a corrective to the centrality of ‘knowledge’ in recent attempts to unify the different degrees and objects of engagement.     

Learning a ‘new language’ – the objective approach to early literacy in English

Published research shows that English speakers gain literacy skills up to the 7‐year level more effectively when taught using a language experience approach rather than a word reading approach (reading common words plus phonic reading). It is suggested that this is because of the almost unique nature of English phonology, that is the strengthening of unstressed syllables when converted to stressed syllables, for example, uhn indipendn’t witnis becomes the systematically distorted form of English, with four changes of vowel, that is reflected in the written form. This means that to read English, speakers must learn a ‘new language’. The research evidence is considered and the implications for teaching are suggested.     

‘I can’t believe I didn’t learn this in school’: ‘refusing secondly’ as an anti-racist English education framework

ABSTRACT

This study examines the responses of pre-service teachers (PSTs) to the young adult novel All American Boys in light of their viewing the 2016 documentary 13^th. In this paper, I use anti-racist English education scholarship to discuss how these two texts helped PSTs ‘refuse to start with secondly.’ I examine how Adichie’s concept of ‘refusing secondly’ within readings of literature both affords and constrains the anti-racist possibilities of literature teacher preparation courses. Using qualitative methodologies, I analysed student reflections, recorded class discussions, and co-constructed class documents. Students connected the historical and the contemporary in considerations of race and racism. They also implicated societal institutions before situating themselves within the continuing legacies of race and racism. These findings demonstrate the ways that ‘refusing secondly’ may offer space for PSTs and teacher educators to use literature to navigate the continuous and indeterminate process of becoming more anti-racist.     

Reading videogames as (authorless) literature

This article presents the outcomes of research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in England and informed by work in the fields of new literacy research, gaming studies and the socio‐cultural framing of education, for which the videogame L. A. Noire was studied within the orthodox framing of the English literature curriculum at A level (pre‐university) and undergraduate (degree level) in the United Kingdom. A mixed methods approach was adopted. Firstly, students contributed to a gameplay blog requiring them to discuss their in‐game experience through the ‘language game’ of English literature, culminating in answering a question constructed with the idioms of the subject's set text ‘final examination’. Secondly, students taught their teachers to play L. A. Noire, with free choice over the context for this collaboration. Thirdly, participants returned to traditional roles to work through a set of study materials, designed to reproduce the conventions of the ‘study guide’ for literature education. Fourthly, interviews were conducted after each phase. The interviews informed a redrafting of the study materials, which are now available online for teachers. In the act of inserting the study of L. A. Noire into the English literature curriculum as currently framed, this research raises epistemological questions about ‘subject identity’, and the implications for digital transformations of texts for ideas about cultural value in schooled literacy and also the politics of ‘expertise’ in pedagogic relations.     

History at Key Stage 2: Covering 1,000 years! Still time for children's questions

This paper argues that recent English education policy has been influenced by external, economic and political factors, rather than founded on a valid understanding of how children's learning actually takes place. I will argue that the ‘performance’ model of education that has dominated the 1990s is inadequate in terms of its implied model of learning. I will review socio-cultural theory and propose it as a more valid conceptualisation. At some point in the future, I believe that the performance model will begin to collapse. An important task for researchers and practitioners is therefore to prepare a more secure alternative.     

Troubling literacy: monolingual assumptions,multilingual contexts,and language teacher expertise

The current educational context in many English speaking countries is one where literacy is understood to be essentially monolingual in orientation; that is, an understanding of literacy around a single common language, with the emphasis on identifying universal, normative ‘standards’ and ‘benchmarks’, such as the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy in Australia, the Primary National Strategy in the United Kingdom, and No Child Left Behind in the United States. This paper aims to problematise such assumptions by examining how teachers, themselves, understand “teaching literacy” when their students come to the teaching/learning relationship with a first language other than English. With a focus on teachers working with bilingual and multilingual students in their early stages of acquiring English as a second language (ESL), the study thus acknowledges the increasingly diverse sociolinguistic profile of students in Australia and elsewhere in the varying degrees of communicative competence they bring to the mainstream in their use of ESL. Moreover, it draws on ESL teacher knowledge and expertise which has been identified as increasingly marginalised within mainstream educational discourse. Through case studies of three ESL teachers in the middle years, salient themes around the interrelated notions of literacy as learning, language for literacy and language as literacy were identified with respect to the literacy needs of second language learners.     

English,literacy, rhetoric: changing the project?

In this paper I begin to trace two movements in the curriculum history and cultural politics of English teaching: on the one hand, a shift from ‘literature’ to ‘literacy’, as organizing principles for the field, and on the other, from ‘language’ to ‘rhetoric’. I do so within a particular understanding of history, as embracing past present and future dimensions. My aim is two‐fold: to open up questions about the subject's historical legacy, and to draw attention to some of the emerging challenges and prospects for English teaching today and tomorrow.