New challenges for literature study in primary school English : Building teacher knowledge and know-how through systemic functional theory

Australian primary school teachers face two major challenges in their implementation of the national curriculum for English: literary study and multimodality. Whilst teachers and students frequently engage with texts like literary picture books, the requirement that teachers build children’s understandings of texts as patterned, aesthetic constructs is new. And it is especially demanding for teachers without specialized training in either literature or multimodality. They must learn to manage the expanded ‘reservoir’ of meaning in school English and develop ‘repertoires’ of semiotic understanding in the course of fulltime teaching (Bernstein, 2000). This paper emerges from a larger study that aimed to meet the challenge of literary study in English by introducing practicing teachers to a semiotic toolkit inspired by systemic functional grammatics. Grammatics, as Halliday (2002) interprets it, distinguishes the theory from the practice of grammar, the metalanguage from language in use. In our project, systemic functional grammatics included study not just of clause-level choices in language but their role in larger discourse frames and, via analogy, in images and multimodal texts. We made use of the ‘resemblance’ between focalization in print narratives and in bi-modal narratives picture books. Adapting semiotic principles like stratification and metafunction to national curriculum notions of ‘levels of analysis’ and ‘threads of meaning’, we used systemic functional (SF) theory to open up the potential of literature study for English teachers in NSW and Victoria, attempting to build understanding about the ‘uses’ of grammatics for a relatively uninformed group of ‘users’ (Martin et al., 2013). Because of the need to manage the theory-practice nexus in professional learning, we attempted to characterize ‘knowledge about’ images in narrative in accessible and systematic ways and to relate this to pedagogic ‘know-how’ in primary teaching and assessment of narrative. The paper introduces the analytical framework we developed to represent and develop knowledge and know-how in primary school literature study. It shows how we used the framework to benchmark teacher starting-points as they commented on students’ responses to a picture book called The Great Bear by Armin Greder and Libby Gleeson (1999). It overviews input provided to teachers in workshops based on SF principles such as system, stratification and metafunctions. Finally, it overviews our initial findings based on our analysis of follow-up interviews with two teachers as they reflected on students’ responses to The Tunnel, by Anthony Browne (1989). Changes are arrayed on clines produced to account for shifts in teacher knowledge and know-how. Early results of our project are very encouraging, providing evidence of significant if varied growth in teachers’ orientations to narrative meaning and increased levels of meta-semiotic awareness. The paper concludes with reflections on the use of SF grammatics for meeting the challenges of literature study in primary school English in an era of multimodality

Building a metalanguage for interpreting multimodal literature: Insights from systemic functional semiotics in two case study classrooms

English is an already crowded curriculum and the incursion of multimodal literature puts it under increased pressure. How do teachers and students learn to understand and deploy tools of analysis that shed light on verbiage and images without becoming entangled in a complex and crowded analytical language? Is it possible to develop a metalanguage that relates meanings made in one mode to those in another – to enrich literary interpretation without overwhelming students’ appreciation of literary texts? An adequate response to this question calls for an epistemological stance and metalanguage that accepts polysemy (multiple meanings); that reads choices as motivated by higher order concerns; and that is relational in its approach to analysis. This paper explores the potential of systemic functional semiotics (SFS) for addressing such requirements. Drawing on data collected in the final year of an Australian Research Council project (DP110104309), it considers three principles of SFS informing the metalanguages used by two secondary teachers in their work with students on literary picture books and fiction films. Halliday’s principle of metafunctions (three major kinds of meaning) enabled the teachers to explore different meaning frames in interpreting images and language; the principle of system (contrasting options for meaning in a given semiotic environment) allowed them to open up the idea of choice for students in analysing texts; and the principle of stratification made relations between meaning, function and form easier to unpack in classroom discourse. The affordances of such intellectual tools in SFS are observed in students’ oral and written responses to literary picture books and in teachers’ accounts of what they taught and what they learned from their classroom interventions. The paper interleaves reflections on each aspect of SFS with interview accounts of how the metalanguage was used to enhance literary interpretation of selected students. The final section of the paper highlights implications of this case study work and possibilities for future research into the relationship between metalanguage and processes of metasemiosis in literary interpretation. It turns on the question of whether the analogic power of concepts like metafunctions, system and stratification gives students portals to literary meaning that enrich (without crowding) interpretive work on multimodal texts

English in The Tempest: The value of metaphor and re-imagining grammar in English

The article discusses the realities and possibilities in the curriculum and in the communicational environment in Australia. It cites the role of distinguished English educator Garth Boomer in acknowledging the importance of theory in English and advocating awareness of the limits of theory. The degree of agency of English teachers as well as the responsibility for learning outcomes is also outlined

Making productive use of four models of school english: A case study revisited

At a time when political leaders and media pundits seek to narrow the English curriculum and reduce its knowledge structure to the 'basics', it is helpful to revisit the potential of different approaches to learning in English that have evolved over time. In this paper I reflect on the semantic features of personal growth, cultural heritage, skills and cultural analysis models of English and exemplify their uses for engaging students with challenging texts like Macbeth. Following this, I return to case study material collected during the classroom work of one teacher and his Year 9 students, and reinterpret their texts in the light of these four models of the discipline. The development of students' work over time reveals how this teacher drew on the meaning potential of each model and demonstrates the power of a principled and recursive use of these in classroom teaching

Building a knowledge structure for English: Reflections on the challenges of coherence, cumulative learning, portability and face validity

A curriculum is a knowledge structure outlining what is to be learned in what order. The Australian curriculum for English emphasises creation of a 'coherent' and 'cumulative' 'body of knowledge about how the English language works', with learning that is 'portable and applicable to new settings across the school years and beyond' (National Curriculum Board, 2009, p. 9, emphasis added). But what happens when those charged with implementing curriculum cannot agree on 'what counts'? This article reflects on key differences between stakeholders about disciplinarity in English, drawing on sociological categories of Bernstein and Maton. The fourth challenge facing implementation is 'face validity'. The creation of a viable knowledge structure for English makes it crucial that teachers and professional bodies find it acceptable. The article concludes with a heuristic figure for representing key parameters of knowledge structure in English and a proposal for interrelating these so as to optimize implementation of the curriculum in Australian classroom

Why school English needs a 'Good Enough' grammatics (and not more grammar)

At the dawn of a national curriculum for English in Australia, grammar has appeared without any serious interrogation of the terms of its re-entry and against ambiguous evidence about its value for teaching writing. What kinds of knowledge about language do teachers need in rhetorically productive teaching? This article investigates the potential of Halliday’s notion of grammatics for understanding students’ writing as acts of meaning in context. Drawing on systemic-functional linguistics, I show how teachers can assess writing achievement using ‘big picture’ tools like genre, register and ‘small picture’ tools like Expansion. I apply these tools to two student texts that call for attention to creative uses of language and to excursions and to difficulties with logic and coherence. The paper concludes that a ‘good enough’ grammatics will enable teachers to recognize playful developments in students’ texts and also to foster their control of literate discourse

Linguistically informed teaching of spelling: Toward a relational approach

Whilst spelling is a feature of most primary classrooms, it is an aspect of literacy instruction that is more often tested than taught. Part of the problem is that many teachers work with limited resources and understandings of the English morpho-phonological language system and lack the confidence they need to operationalise this linguistic knowledge effectively in teaching. In this paper, we present findings from a doctoral study that aimed to improve the teaching of spelling through a linguistically informed toolkit based on powerful morpho-phonological awareness. Ten teachers were shown how to direct children's attention to the meaningful structures within words (morphemes), how morphemes relate to sounds (phonemes) within words, and importantly, how morphemes connect words in meaningful ways. The results of teachers' applying a relational approach to spelling in classroom interventions are revealing. Pre and post-testing of children revealed not only statistically significant improvements in children's correct spelling, but in spelling approximations and verbal reasoning about these. Teachers also reported increased levels of knowledge and confidence in assisting children to relate meaningful parts of words (morphemes) to their sounds (phonemes). The implications have practical relevance for teachers and fruitful avenues for further research into children's spelling development

A grammatics 'good enough' for school English in the 21st century: Four challenges in realising the potential

In a complex communicational environment and at the dawn of an Australian curriculum, teachers need new kinds of knowledge about language (KAL). Our paper investigates the character of a 'good enough' KAL through 'grammatics' - a metalanguage based on careful study of grammar - a way of thinking with grammar in mind. It identifies four challenges facing any grammatics that is going to be adequate to the discipline: (1) Building a coherent account of KAL for contemporary English; (2) Fashioning a rhetorical grammatics for improving students' compositions; (3) Improving continuity and cumulative learning through the years of schooling; and (4) Developing a grammatics adequate to multimodal communication. Our paper draws on the resources of systemic functional grammatics to explore these challenges and considers the implications for teachers and students