We begin with a series of articles that look at how educators can enhance learning by tapping into the knowledge and experience that students bring to the classroom. Through an exploration of students’ discussions of Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Martha Bedford shows that labelling some students as ‘low ability’ is not only inaccurate, but unfair. She also examines the extent to which reading selections should be based on the likelihood that students will ‘relate’ to texts or on the ways that literature can move students beyond their own experiences.
Todd Craig focuses on how the instructor as hip-hop DJ/Producer can function as an organic intellectual in the college composition classroom, particularly by valuing students’ cultural knowledge and thus enabling them to embrace the revision process in their writing. Monica Brady examines how students in Ramallah, Palestine were able to explore issues of identity through their study of Romeo and Juliet, while Bob Blaisdell reads a section of Anna Karenina to consider how students might think about life and learning.
The knowledge and experience of teachers must also be valued, but as bureaucrats and politicians increasingly control what happens in the classroom, this seems ever less frequently the case. Paul Tarpey explores reclaiming teachers’ professional memory as an important tool in countering the prevailing conservative discourses surrounding English education. Sandra K. Cimbricz and Matthew L. McConn examine the ways that so-called ‘standards-based testing’ in US secondary schools forces English Language Arts teachers to teach fewer literary works and thus spend more time on informational texts outside their discipline – a situation that raises the question of how ‘English’ is being situated as a subject.
Finally, Bethan Marshall offers a tribute to Peter Medway (1941–2015) who was her colleague at Kings College London; and John Yandell reviews two new books: Mark A. Pike’s Ethical English: Teaching and Learning in English as Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education and MasterClass in English Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning, edited by Sue Brindley and Bethan Marshall.