Studies of comparative classroom practice in the teaching of secondary English are limited, especially when it comes to exploration of the day-to-day practice of English teachers in the secondary classroom. This book presents a case study analysis of secondary classroom practice in three countries: Canada, England and Scotland. Each country has had different degrees of state involvement within the secondary English curriculum over the last twenty years. England has had the highest degree of state involvement in that it has had several statutory national curricula and a variety of assessment regimes. Scotland has had a non- statutory curriculum and no national tests and Canada has had no national curriculum at all, with education being determined at province level, and each province varying its policies. The research adopts a case study approach involving both classroom observation and interviews with teachers. Through this, the authors explore the impact of state involvement on the reality of what happens in secondary English classrooms. The book invites readers to consider the applicability of the findings to their own contexts, to examine their own practice in the light of this and to consider the nature of the relationships between policy, personal belief and practice in the teaching of English.

Drama at the Heart of English is unique in its exploration of drama’s potential to revitalise English as a secondary school subject. It focuses specifically on the value and inclusive nature of educational drama practices in the reading of literary, dramatic and multimodal texts in the English classroom. Examples from the authors’ research show English teachers working in the drama-in-English mode with real learners as part of their everyday classroom activity. Challenging current curriculum and assessment constraints, the authors argue that drama-in-English pedagogy re-establishes English as a creative, imaginative and interactive subject. This book: offers a blend of theory and practice to demonstrate the powerful potential of drama-in-English proposes that drama is a uniquely sustainable form of learning in English when fully integrated into the daily work of classroom teachers highlights the intrinsic connection that exists between drama and the playful qualities of literary texts analyses landmark moments and key policy shifts that have shaped the development of the relationship between drama and English over time This resource is for all educators interested in and passionate about the field of English and Language Arts. It is a must-read for the international academic community of researchers, practitioners, teacher-educators and teachers of English, as well as student-teachers of English/Media/Drama.

Shortlisted for the UK Literacy Association's Academic Book Award 2021 The Bloomsbury Handbook of Reading Perspectives and Practices focuses on the experiences of reading from a young age to maturity and the different ways reading is encountered: in other words, the processes involved as well as the outcomes. The international group of experts, within both teaching and academia, focuses on reading in school: how is it taught? What is taught? How is it assessed? Controversial issues are explored: the acquisition of phonics; teaching the canon, including or ignoring digital texts; the advent of standards-based tests. The contributions also consider people's biographies of reading, their memories of reading in school and their current views on literature. Together, this well-edited volume provides a more complete view of reading than is currently on offer, exploring all aspects of what it means to be literate and how we define being literate.

This book offers a pivotal re-evaluation of English teaching one century on from The Newbolt Report of 1921, responding to this seminal work and exploring its impact on issues and contemporary aims of English teaching today. Bringing together a range of experts in English higher education, the book provides a twenty-first century inflection on the enduring issues highlighted by Newbolt’s original report. It examines topics including the demands of assessment, the narrowing of the literary curriculum, the impact of education reform, targets related to social mobility, class and widening participation, as well as broader questions about the function of literature and the arts in education. Chapters also consider issues surrounding the promotion of community cohesion, diversity and how technological advances might reshape literary education. This unique re-evaluation of the achievements and findings of the Newbolt Commission will be essential reading for those researching English education and the history of education.

Drawing together Smagorinsky's extensive research over a 20-year period, Learning to Teach English and the Language Arts explores how beginning teachers' pedagogical concepts are shaped by a variety of influences. Challenging popular thinking about the binary roles of teacher education programs and school-based experiences in the process of learning to teach, Smagorinsky illustrates, through case studies in the disciplines of English and the Language Arts, that teacher education programs and classroom/school contexts are not discrete contexts for learning about teaching, nor are each of these contexts unified in the messages they offer about teaching. He explores the tensions, not only between these contexts and others, but within them to illustrate the social, cultural, contextual, political and historical complexity of learning to teach. Smagorinsky revisits familiar theoretical understandings, including Vygotsky's concept development and Lortie's apprenticeship of observation, to consider their implications for teachers today and to examine what teacher candidates learn during their teacher education experiences and how that learning shapes their development as teachers.

The fourth volume in the successful IFTE series provides an international perspective on the knowledge and professional development of the English teaching workforce. It provides a state-of-the-art review of English teaching and teachers and how they are developed over time. With contributions from leading scholars around the world, this volume is divided into four sections that follow the journey of an English teacher from being a student, to the latter stages of professional development and becoming a teacher. It sheds light on how different elements such as school culture, professional development, higher-level qualifications, professional associations and government policies contribute or detract from retention and job satisfaction. International Perspectives on English Teacher Development serves as ideal reading for the research and teacher education community along with teachers and student teachers globally.

Drawing on the author’s own experience as a student and a teacher in England and Japan, this book is a comparative study of boys’ secondary schools in these two countries. By comparing two nations that are very different in their history, culture, and geographical location, and by focusing on schools that are affordable to the majority of the population, the analysis carried out in this book takes the onus away from money, national culture, and religion, allowing for a more insightful understanding of those elements of schooling, which prove essential to successful class reproduction and those that are contingent. The book also explores the experiences of boys who do not fit orthodox images of heterosexual masculinity, discussing their interaction with teenage subcultures which encourage non-conformity to middle-class norms. Representing a novel contribution to the understanding of the relationship between education, gender, and class, this book will be a valuable resource to scholars and students of education studies, Japanese studies, and the sociology of education.