Reading the Word Instead of the World: GCSE English Re-sits and the Divorce of Literacies from Their Lifeworld Use

Figures & data

Table 1. GCSE English re-sit lessons A and B

	Lesson AText: letter from Jourdon Anderson ‘To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson’Context: Slavery	Lesson B Texts from past exam paper: Reinventing the Wheel (Charles Starmer-Smith)/A Wheel within a Wheel, Frances Willard. Context: Cycling
1	Students discuss images, people’s names, and place names. Guess country, century, and context	Teacher recaps format of Component 2 reading paper & process for first 10 minutes of exam
2	Teacher & students read letter together, discussing context, relationships, and purpose of letter	Students apply first 10-minute process, skim-reading two texts, noting genre, audience, purpose & writers’ perspectives
3	Students answer comprehension questions relating to above points	Teacher & students read exam question, unpack what it’s asking
4	Students discuss feelings of writer, then select most accurate summary from options. Pick out quotes from text as supporting evidence	Students match different language techniques with their definitions
5	Students discuss writer’s tone, then select best description from options. Pick out quotes from text as evidence, discuss and note down how language expresses tone	Students find 3 different techniques in each text, write corresponding quotes, and note down effects of language
6	Teacher & students read exam question, unpack what it’s asking	Students compare good and bad PEA exam models, guessing which is which, and discuss what makes the good one better
7	Teacher models PEA exam style paragraph	Students read examiner’s comments and marks about the good/bad models, then students identify PEA process for Grade 4
8	Students write own answer, using points & quotes identified previously	Students write own answer, using techniques & quotes identified previously
KEY	PEA = Point, Evidence, Analysis (a framework for structuring a paragraph for an exam style reading response essay)

Table 2. Test-teaching practices identified as deleterious in relation to exam validity

Point of reference	Test-teaching practice
(i)	Pedagogic practices which mirror the same format as the exam questions
(ii)	Setting lesson objectives based on test items
(iii)	Using score-boosting activities
(iv)	Instruction and practice on parallel test materials

Figure 1. Test-teaching continuum.

Table 3. Prevalence and attitudes towards test-teaching, 2020 study

Codes	Summary of attitude	Participant	Participants’ comments
1. High prevalence of test-teaching	Relatively uncritical of test-teaching.	Owen	I won’t apologise for that. That’s the nature of the course.
	Uses test-teaching scripted lessons. Accepts test-teaching is problematic, but does not resist it.	Sue	… spending 30 odd weeks practising to pass the exam. You just turn up, and know you’ve got a lesson that maybe isn’t ideal, but is there that you can go and just recite it in front of the students.
2. Moderate: resists test-teaching where possible	Finds test-teaching boring and a turn-off for students. Accepts pragmatic reality of test-teaching, and only resists it when students will not tolerate it. Enjoys non-test-teaching lessons.	Rob	The exam just kills all those opportunities to make your teaching more interesting. Going off-piste, doing lovely stuff, doing stories that I want to do … we have this thing called the graveyard slot which is the 3.30 to 5 where it is impossible in my experience to get any work out of any of the kids.
	Actively resists test-teaching by including ‘reading-for-pleasure’ unit. Accepts pragmatic reality of test-teaching grudgingly.	Fayola	… periods of wider skills and reading for pleasure followed by drill the exam (Mark). I feel like the whole year is teaching exam tricks (Saira).
		Mark
		Saira
	Conflicted between the pressure to get results and feeling that test-teaching is unethical and un-educative. Concerned that students have internalised test-teaching as normal education.	Bernie	You push shortcuts and simple solutions that make it easy for them to repeat the task in an exam situation rather than applications from reality. They are not really interested in discussing the actual meaning of the article, they just want to know what the tricks are.
		Rose	students co-construct a reductive classroom culture and the test-teaching practices … by resisting more discursive and educative pedagogies
3. Strongly resists test-teaching	Highly critical of test-teaching. Views it as un-educative, fails to deal with literacy.	Amir	… get them to genuinely comprehend what’s going on in a text rather than looking about how that translates directly into the questions they might have to answer.
	Refuses to test-teach	Tina	I just don’t do this … I do project-based learning which embeds all of the skills within it.

Figure 2. Teacher-Knowledge-Student positioning, banking model.