Classroom talk: Are we listening to teachers’ voices?

This paper aims to begin a discussion about why teachers may face some dilemmas when they try to set up talk and small group collaborative learning in the classroom. This is a preliminary evaluation of some of the published literature and the issues arising from my own perspective as a school teacher and a teacher educator.The discussion is part of a wider study of teachers’ dilemmas with classroom talk. I am also investigating what teachers say about classroom talk through interviews to find out what they consider to be the challenges. But, in this paper, I am simply aiming to set the scene and outline some initial issues. For the purpose of this discussion I have decided to present the paper into two parts. The first part highlights some of the issues identified by writers and researchers on talk in the academic literature. The second part considers areas that teachers and beginning teachers tend to raise when discussing this issue informally from a professional perspective. Obviously a fusion of these concerns is desirable and the final part of the paper looks at a piece of research that begins to bridge the divide between these two.     

Writing the Unseen Poem: can the writing of poetry help to support pupils' engagement in the reading of poetry?

This article discusses a small scale project investigating the role of writing poetry in order to strengthen pupils' responses to reading and analysing poetry. This takes place within the context of preparation for a question on unseen poetry in a high stakes examination, in a contemporary climate where creative responses to poetry are reported to be less prevalent than analytical responses within an assessment‐focused curriculum. The project investigates strategies to inspire pupils to write their own poetry and to analyse the work of their peers in order to ‘put themselves in the shoes’ of the poet, supporting them in preparing for the examination question. It also involves teacher‐modelling of the writing and reading processes to support pupils in feeling part of a reading and writing community.     

Liberating Tongues?: A Theoretical Analysis of the Work of a full‐time Embedded Spoken Word Educator in a Secondary School

This article will discuss my often challenging transition from radical political poet to full time poet teacher in a Roman Catholic secondary school. Can the counter‐cultural art form of spoken word education thrive within the institution of school? By looking at classroom and after school experience, student poems and relevant theory, the paper will consider the opportunities and complications of using spoken word education to stage marginalised voices.     

‘But sir,I lied’ – the value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom

This article aims to examine the benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. It explores the blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing and argues that teachers can help students if they provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives. Furthermore, it puts forward the case that when teachers share pertinent autobiographical episodes then pupils are more willing to respond in an engaged and passionate fashion. In developing my argument, I suggest that autobiographical writing can be therapeutic in certain classroom contexts. The data sources for this article are the author's own life and two case studies: an 11‐year‐old boy, George, and a 15‐year‐old girl, Eloise, both of whom were pupils of the author and wrote autobiographically for him. The methodological approach is that of bricolage: chiefly, the article combines ethnographical observation with interviews and discourse analysis. I also examine quantitative studies which look at the therapeutic dimensions of autobiographical writing. Theoretically I draw on Friere's concept of ‘conscientization’ (Friere 1985: 49) in order to critique the ‘banking’ concept of education, which would close down opportunities for pupils to write freely about their own lives.