Setting an agenda for English education research

Figures & data

Table 1. Results of second Delphi round in descending order of importance

Item	Priority for research	Number of choices
A	Social justice (English and different social groups (race, class, migrants, linguistic minorities, intersections; closing the attainment gap; citizenship through literature)	14
B	Translating research into (and out of) the classroom; collaboration between academia and teachers for research; more exemplar case studies; dissemination of teacher voice; researching sustained impacts of intervention	13
C	Race in English education (Whiteness; anti-racist pedagogy; politics and persistence of Western canon); diversifying/ decolonising the curriculum; the use of literature in translation or of other Anglophone countries	13
D	The nature of the subject: Literature in English as a whole; integrity of the subject in face of literacy; what is knowledge in English; relationships between secondary subject and tertiary discipline	12
E	Teacher professionalism and agency: external pressures; risk management; Identity and professional development in the context of increasing regulatory definitions of teacher effectiveness and expertise; teacher values, autonomy, creativity, risk taking in curriculum and pedagogy	11
F	English and language; oracy; speaking and listening; EAL; teaching English in other language medium environments; translanguaging; bringing ethnic and linguistic minority scholars into the field (reconsider English? Education); questioning	11
G	Curriculum development in English/ engagement with curriculum policy/Policy discourse links to classroom practice	10
H	Student perspectives; student enjoyment in context of constraints, e.g. functional English alternatives that inspire; delivery of large amounts of content while maintaining a love of the subject	10
I	Philosophy of English; what do we mean by “knowledge” in English?; “authenticity” in reading and writing; reading as a way of knowing; status of subject and discipline of English; “real world” English and its relationship to school English; genre	9
J	Assessment (Impact of high stakes testing; epistemic responsibility in assessment)	8
K	Cultural capital, e.g. effect of reading on cultural capital, influence of BAME/ women/ LGBQT+ writers on cultural capital	8
L	How to encourage critical literacy/ critical reasoning	8
M	Creative writing: teachers as writers, confidence and competence; creative writing pedagogy; how and when students “learn to write”	6
N	Longitudinal studies of teachers’ careers and teaching practice; life cycle of English teacher – from secondary to degree to teaching; impact of school-based routes into English teaching; how teachers’ own reading and interests impact their teaching; early career English teacher workforce; English teacher education and retention	5
O	Pedagogies for EAL and migrant children; integration into practice of theory and research on how ethnic and linguistic minorities are taught and how they learn; engaging with families of migrant and immigrant children	2

Table 2. Other suggested areas for research priorities in English education

English and climate change

Workload for English teachers (e.g. essay-based subjects and teachers’ mental health)

Vocabulary (e.g. quantitative data on vocab and development of reading skills)

Technology and/or AI in English (e.g. smartphones and their impact on English; impact on student disposition and skills or needs; digital and multimodal literacies)

Marking and feedback (methods, workload, time)

Teaching of Shakespeare

Social media, teachmeets, grassroots movements: pros and cons in terms of English development, e.g. information and misinformation

Analysis of classroom transcripts re classroom talk

Academic writing (pedagogies; what factors correlate with better essay writing; writing frames for response to text; cognitive and metacognitive processing)

Post-16 English: pedagogies; decline of take up; post 16 transition

Social and Emotional Learning in English/English Education and ethical dilemmas; emotional capacity to understand “effect on reader”

English and mental health (of students); anxiety; creativity; wellbeing; student agency; student enjoyment

English as a subject for the future/ preparing students for their futures; what do we need to function as literate today?

Multimodality: Develop an adequate theory of multimodality in communication (e.g. voice to text in composition, automatic editing, etc.); multimodal composition in the classroom; leveraging multimodalities in building overall literacy competence; integration of digital and print-based literacies)

Reading (as literacy): strategies for strugglers at 14+; most effective ways to encourage reading outside the classroom, including for disengaged; connections between reading and writing; pursuit of reading and writing genres outside of the “genres of power”

Reading (as an advanced skill): responding to non-fiction; pedagogies for comparison and summary; inference skills; connection between linguistic knowledge and literature/creative texts; literature pedagogies

Relationship of English and STEM; effect of focus on STEM on English (e.g. gender; tertiary takeup)

International comparative studies of policy, curriculum, pedagogy and professional development

Transitions at different age points

Collaboration in English teaching

Deep learning in English

Cultural competence

Use of creative research methods