What, why and how–the policy, purpose and practice of grammatical terminology

© 2018, © 2018 National Association for the Teaching of English. This article critically examines the literature around grammar and grammatical terminology. It is essentially a critical consideration of the debates in England and Wales in four main parts. Part 1 considers debates in policy, the “What”, i.e. grammatical terminology from the perspective of national policy as defined by the English National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 and 2, and the Key Stage 2 “Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Test”. Part 2, Debates in Purpose, examines the “Why”: it views grammatical terminology through a more theoretical lens which considers the potential purpose and value of explicit grammatical terminology in the classroom. Part 3 touches upon Debates in Practice, the “How”, examining what is already understood about the teaching of grammatical terminology in terms of grammar pedagogy, language acquisition and word learning. While each part has a distinct focus, the field is complex with overlap and interrelated issues. The final part looks briefly at teacher and pupil perspectives

Educating Britain? Political Literacy and the Construction of National History

Despite the reflexive nature of historical enquiry and the degree of national interconnectness now theorized by historians in the United Kingdom, education debates over history teaching in Britain often yield a comforting defence of Britain's 'island story'. The singular 'island story' is an economical narrative device favoured by politicians and further mediated through newspapers which profit from such national cryogenics. Maintenance of a currency, or crisis, of Britishness can also be contrasted with the relative absence of longitudinal or comparative enquiry into identity and school curricula. In addition, the teaching of states, connections and post-sovereign communities is largely under-theorized, potentially contributing to the sterility of future debates about citizenship, agency and Britain’s wider political reach. It is argued here that the public framing of history as nationhood and the underdevelopment of children’s political literacy are mutually reinforcing conditions by which the state has constructed a stabilizing, yet shifting presence of the ‘national’

Move over Nelly: lessons from 30 years of employment-based initial teacher education in England

Recruiting, preparing and retaining high-quality teachers are recurrent themes of local, national and international education agendas. Traditional university-led forms of teacher education continue to be challenged, and defended, as nations strive to secure a teaching force equipped to achieve high-quality learning outcomes for all students. One commonly adopted policy solution has been the diversification of teacher preparation routes: the alternative certification agenda. In this article, we examine the entire history of one alternative route in place in England from 1997 to 2012, the Graduate Teacher Programme. Using one example of an employment-based programme, we argue that opportunities to engineer innovative and creative spaces in the face of the current teacher preparation reform agenda need to be seized. This case study, which is contextualised in both the international debates about alternative teacher certification routes and the current policy agenda in England, demonstrates the extent to which successive administrations have failed to learn from the lessons of the past in the rush to recycle policies and claim them as their own

Schools and civil society : corporate or community governance

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of voice and deliberation of differences whose resolution is central to the mediation of and responsiveness to learning needs. A recent study of governing bodies in England and Wales argues that the trend to corporatising school governance will diminish the capacity of schools to learn how they can understand cultural traditions and accommodate them in their curricula and teaching strategies. A democratic, stakeholder model remains crucial to the effective practice of governing schools. By deliberating and reconciling social and cultural differences, governance constitutes the practices for mediating particular and cosmopolitan worlds and thus the conditions for engaging young people in their learning, as well as in the preparation for citizenship in civil society

‘Nowhere that fits’ – the dilemmas of school choice for parents of children with statements of special educational needs (SEN) in England

Giving parents a choice with regard to their children’s education has been central to the political discourse of school reform at least since the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) (DfE, 1988). With regard to children with a statement of special educational needs (SSEN), a plethora of policies and laws (e.g. ERA, 1988; Education Act, 1996, SENDA, 2001)have given parents not only the right to choose a school, but also to appeal to decisions in the best interest of their children. Yet, despite the discourse the implementation and practice of such reforms are neither assured nor simple. Participants in the study indicated that they have little choice of suitable provision and are having to compromise either the academic or the social aspects of their child’s schooling. This paper argues that for many parents whose children have a statement of SEN the choice of a school is often a dilemma as nowhere seems to fit

Academic self-concept, gender and single-sex schooling

This paper assesses gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in 1958 (the National Child Development Study). We address the question of whether attending single-sex or co-educational schools affected students’ perceptions of their own academic abilities (academic self-concept). Academic selfconcept was found to be highly gendered, even controlling for prior test scores. Boys had higher self-concepts in maths and science, and girls in English. Single-sex schooling reduced the gender gap in self-concept, while selective schooling was linked to lower academic self-concept overall

The Return to Final Paper Examining in English National Curriculum Assessment and School Examinations: Issues of Validity, Accountability and Politics

There are sound educational and examining reasons for the use of coursework assessment and practical assessment of student work by teachers in schools for purposes of reporting examination grades. Coursework and practical work test a range of different curriculum goals to final papers and increase the validity and reliability of the result. However, the use of coursework and practical work in tests and examinations has been a matter of constant political as well as educational debate in England over the last 30 years. The paper reviews these debates and developments and argues that as accountability pressures increase, the evidence base for published results is becoming narrower and less valid as the system moves back to wholly end-of-course testing

Trajectories of higher education system differentiation: structural policymaking and the impact of tuition fees in England and Australia

This article explores the impact of student self-financing systems on inequalities of access to higher education (HE) through comparative analysis of two national systems, those of England and Australia. The analysis of the historical development of HE in each nation identifies a set of comparative global themes: the expansion of higher education in response to the needs of the national economy; globalisation and the changing labour market; social pressures for equity in access to higher education; and the growing role of the central state in higher education. The article presents a discussion of system differentiation based around the following characteristics: tuition fee and bursary regimes; institutional autonomy; institutional diversity; the strength of equity arguments; and the role of the state in widening participation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the often complex interactions between these characteristics and aims to add to our understanding of the impact of student self-financing regimes on trajectories of system differentiation and on access and participation

Calibrating fundamental British values: how head teachers are approaching appraisal in the light of the Teachers’ Standards 2012, Prevent and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015

In requiring that teachers should ‘not undermine fundamental British values (FBV)’, a phrase originally articulated in the Home Office counter-terrorism document, Prevent, the Teachers’ Standards has brought into focus the nature of teacher professionalism. Teachers in England are now required to promote FBV within and outside school, and, since the publication of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act of 2015 and the White Paper ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’, are required to prevent pupils from being drawn towards radicalisation. School practices in relation to the promotion of British values are now subject to OfSTED inspection under the Common Inspection Framework of 2015. The research presented here considers the policy and purpose of appraisal in such new times, and engages with 48 school leaders from across the education sector to reveal issues in emerging appraisal practices. Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of Liquid Modernity is used to fully understand the issues and dilemmas that are emerging in new times and argue that fear and ‘impermanence’ are key characteristics of the way school leaders engage with FBV

Key skills for all? The Key Skills Qualification and Curriculum 2000

It is widely recognised that the Key Skills Qualification, an important component of the Curriculum 2000 advanced level curriculum reforms has experienced extensive problems during its first full year of implementation. This much is not in dispute. What is being keenly debated, however, are the ways in which this experience should be analysed and what lessons should be drawn. Is it a case of understandable ‘teething problems’ which will be overcome as the qualification ‘beds in’ or are there deeper and more fundamental problems of the purpose and design of the Key Skills Qualification for advanced level students? In order to address these questions, this article examines the Key Skills Qualification within its historical and policy context as well as bringing together a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered as part of an Institute of Education (IOE)/Nuffield Foundation Research Project. The research suggests that while there is support for the concept of key skills, the Qualification has been met with considerable student and professional resistance due to its narrow skills focus and assessment regime within the context of increased study programmes at advanced level. We conclude that the Government's aim of 'key skills for all' at advanced level is unlikely to be achieved unless it takes a fundamentally different approach to policy in this area