On Learning and Re-learning: Language and Politics Across the Curriculum

Abstract

This is a different essay from the one I set out to write. When I began, I had in mind a picture of my development as a teacher that was linear. I saw myself as a committed and enthusiastic teacher whose understanding about the nature of learning had developed over time. I had a theory that as a young teacher I was focused on content, on the idea that there were things about the world that I wanted students to learn, and that later I had come to understand the importance of the process of learning, that knowledge is constructed right there in the classroom with an input from all of us. It was a neat story with a beginning and an end. When I started to research the past, however, and found articles and essays I had written over the years, I discovered that the reality was much messier. My understanding had indeed developed and is still growing, but I was surprised at what I knew and was aware of as a young teacher. Moreover, my view about some of the aspects of my teaching that I had shelved in the 1990s, the use of fictional stories in history for example, had changed. Retirement, my efforts in writing about my experiences in the classroom, and the opportunity to work in partnership with young teachers in Palestine have given me the space to reflect upon my teaching, to theorise my practice and become clearer about my beliefs. So this essay is a glimpse of a work in progress, and it’s about my identity as a teacher being just that.

Keywords:

• Memory
• narrative
• language
• curriculum design

Acknowledgement

With many thanks to Mary Shannon, my friend and colleague with whom I worked closely in the past and whose memories helped piece together this story.

Notes

1. The Maroons were slaves who escaped captivity and formed their own communities in the hills in Jamaica, raiding the plantations and assisting others to escape. Nanny was a well-known leader of the rebels in the eighteenth century.

2. The ILEA was abolished in 1990. These conferences were part of a wider campaign to ensure the continuity of the authority’s work.