Under which king, Bezonian?

Reading the recent Ofsted Curriculum Research Review of English shortly after the accession of a new monarch to the UK throne brings to mind Pistol’s reply to Justice Shallow when he tries to claim authority under the king: “Under which king, Bezonian?” (2Henry IV, v.iii). “Bezonian” might be applied to Ofsted’s strangely shallow “research review”, which casts grave doubt on the capacity of the government’s inspection agency to inform the curriculum.

Ofsted was set up in 1992 as a schools inspection agency alongside the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). From 1997 it continued to exercise a separate function from SCAA’s successor, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Both the SCAA and the QCA were quasi-autonomous organisations with a consultative role of working with the profession on the school curriculum. However, the functions and influence of the QCA were steadily reduced. In 2004, the National Assessment Agency took over the specific role of the delivery and administration of National Curriculum assessments; and in 2007 Ofqual, the government’s qualifications authority, assumed the regulation of examination and assessment boards. The remaining work of the QCA was transferred to the new Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA); the QCA was formally dissolved in 2010, when the QCDA and Ofqual gained statutory status.

Throughout this history of frequent change, Ofsted remained separate from the curriculum and assessment agencies. Significantly, however, the Ofsted Report of 2012 stated that the Department for Education should highlight national and international research, especially on the teaching of writing, to be promulgated by Ofsted. By 2019, following the minister-led campaign to promote “powerful knowledge” and “cultural literacy”,¹ Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework stated that inspectors will judge schools on the extent to which their curricula are “designed to give all learners the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life” (Ofsted 2019, 8). The role that Ofsted and the inspection system might play in disseminating the nature of that knowledge was to emerge through its publication of a Curriculum Research Review series. The Curriculum Research Review of English was issued in 2022.

Historically, 2022 might be noted in the UK not only as the start of a new reign but also as the year in which government brought education in England under one body that would control both what was taught and the inspection of how it was taught. Thirty years after banning publication of the Language in the National Curriculum report (Carter 1991) for its refusal to endorse a simplistic formulation of linguistic correctness, government has achieved hegemony over schooling in English education. If teachers fail to conform to Ofsted’s curricular prescriptions, Ofsted’s inspectors will doubtless place schools in punitive “special measures”.

A separation of powers between the curriculum and inspection agencies is intrinsically desirable, especially when the inspection body has so little apparent understanding of the English curriculum and of learning in English. The 2022 Ofsted Curriculum Research Review of English states that it ‘reflects the advice of the expert panel’s working definition of subject knowledge as the “concepts, facts, processes, language, narratives and conventions of each subject”. As the NATE response to the Review observes, this suggests that the authors have developed a full and balanced view of subject English, drawing upon its foundational theory and long history of conceptual development. But this is not the case. The review posits a view of the subject primarily in terms of skills and processes to be taught prior to engagement in language in use. This does not align with the construction of the subject that has been developed over many years or with the practical experience of English teachers at every level. Language, as John Dixon wrote (1967,13) is learned in operation. The research drawn on is extremely limited and partial, and referencing frequently fails to support the claims that are made. The response from NATE’s fellow organisations, including the English Association, has been highly critical, and the English and Media Centre has called for the Review to be withdrawn.

English Education has a rich and complex history over three centuries. As John Hardcastle (1999) pointed out over twenty years ago, even the best-known movements in English teaching – the Arnold-Eliot-Leavis tradition, and the progressive tradition of James Britton and his associates – are a part but not the centre of the story. We may not expect government to appreciate the influence of Enlightenment philosophers in framing the concept of “growth” that has long informed English teaching. But we do expect a curriculum authority to exhibit an understanding – a critical understanding – of the theory and practice of English education as it has developed over the decades since the Newbolt Report of 1921.

In these circumstances, the importance of professional networks, including subject association publications and journals, is greater than ever. A special issue of this journal in 2024 (sixty years after the first issue of NATE Bulletin, the predecessor of English in Education) will develop this theme.

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This issue of English in Education opens with Madison Stuart’s “Actual”, an English teacher’s meditation on the “arc of education” and the nature of change. In our first article, Piotr Konieczny and Kenneth Eckert report on a project in a Korean university that involved students of English Literature and sociology in authoring pages for Wikipedia. This real-life exercise in writing (language clearly learned in operation) engaged students in preparing articles that were eventually accepted by the Wikipedia community, albeit with many tagged for further copy editing.

Loraine Prinsloo-Marcus and Bridget Campbell engaged pre-service education students in a South African university in writing their language autobiographies. They discovered their students’ experience of exclusion as well as of confidence in learning English; pride in using their community language alongside identity confusion; difficulties in transitioning between languages; complex attitudes towards language varieties and language proficiency. The autobiographies enlightened teacher educators in ways that assist in adjusting their pedagogy.

Annabel Watson and her associate researchers explored the ways teachers chose literary texts to teach at Key Stage 3 (11–14 year olds in the UK). They found that agency was a complex matter. Despite the popular view that performativity has driven out “beliefs”, teachers negotiated an extraordinarily complex array of values and constraints, sometimes struggling to make choices aligned to their beliefs. The researchers noted teachers’ emphasis on collective agency in continuing to enact their values and beliefs about English education.

In contrast, Martin Matthews used an arts-based method – found poetry derived from semi-structured individual interviews – to explore the experience of teachers in a performative culture. He analysed transcribed interviews thematically to create the poems, which he shared with the participants during the course of the interviews, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their “voices” and develop new discussions. Overall, the poems suggest that participants believe they have limited agency and trust in their professional knowledge and actions.

Working with year 7 (ages 11–12) pupils in a girls’ school in the south-east of England, Claire Burnett & Louise Chapman Hazell created a programme of writing and performing poetry to help pupils reflect on their personal and familial experiences of gender. Many pupils initially expressed an awareness of prejudice, fear and vulnerability, but the process of discussion and writing enabled voices to emerge previously unheard internally by the individual or externally by others. This, the authors claim, can create an empowerment culture in the school.

Our final research article reflects on the teaching of the unseen poetry element of the English Literature GCSE in 2022. Given the paradox of the examined poem that the examinee cannot prepare for, Edward Collyer opted to develop students’ personal engagement with poetry by a guided but open analysis of selected poems and by encouraging personal writing. The exercise engaged pupils with the texts and produced rich discussions of “big” ideas. Further, pupils appeared to engage more effectively with structural and linguistic elements of poetry after writing themselves.

Ian Thompson’s review of Peter Smagorinsky’s Learning to Teach English in the Language Arts places Ofsted’s (2022) interpretation of research in English education against Vygotsky’s view of learning as a dialectical interplay between “everyday” and “academic” concepts. Smagorinsky addresses the ways in which beginning teachers adapt pedagogical and conceptual tools in particular social settings. He takes a realistic position on the limitations of culturally mediated human development within the complex contexts of learning to teach. This concept of the “Actual” might recall the perspective of Madison Stuart in our opening poem.

Finally, we publish two Calls for Papers, both for 2023: Social Justice and English Education, edited by Velda Elliott, and Critical Literacies and Social Media, edited by Navan Govender and Jennifer Farrar. Please consider contributing. You’ll find the editors’ contact details and instructions for submission at the end of each Call for Papers.

Notes

1. Please see (Eaglestone 2021; Hodgson and Harris 2022) for critical-historical accounts of these concepts.