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Editorial: Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

The Victorian writer, philosopher and critic, John Ruskin, once invited his readers to ‘Commiserate [with] the hapless Board School child, shut out from dreamland and poetry, and prematurely...

‘Disciplinary consciousness’ and English

What is a discipline and why does it matter? Knowing about our disciplines is more and more important given the increasingly generic demands of teaching and assessment, the proliferating ‘lethal...

Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

Evidence suggests that opportunities for students to enjoy talk, reading and writing in the subject of English are increasingly delimited in maintained secondary schools in England. The pressures...

Decline and fall? Students’ perspectives on A-level English at 16

English A-level1 is in steady decline. In England, student numbers have dropped from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 in 2023. Research involving teachers suggests that the current GCSE specifications and...

Human superpowers: Talking in class

The spoken word wields immense power. Everyday conversation is the basis of human relationships: communication underpins collaboration, the engine that facilitated the success of our species...

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better (Beckett, 1983): GCSE English students’ relationship with failure

The pressure to ‘fail better’ weighs heavy in GCSE English resit classrooms, echoing Samuel Beckett’s famous words from Worstward Ho. However, this oft-repeated mantra, stripped of its...

An ideological wolf lurking in the metaphorical sheep’s clothing? The importance of metaphor analysis in English education

In the current era of regulation and regimentation, English teachers’ sense of professionalism is constrained by their ‘policy’ identities (Ball, 2003). Their sense of subject exists within...

‘Satellite colleges’: Overseas branches of British independent schools as a growing field of research

The international school sector has seen significant growth in recent years, with the UK-based International Schools Consultancy reporting that there are 13,614 English-medium schools around the...

Boundary crossings with artists, teachers and children: Integrating creative pedagogies for young people’s wellbeing

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Global organisations (OECD, 2018) highlight the need for renewed focus on creativity and wellbeing in education. While Wales and Scotland have innovated their curriculum to reflect a stronger...

Editorial: Doing cynefin: Exploring ideas on belonging, connectedness and community in the Curriculum for Wales

Wales is a small country that is distinctive in its landscape, culture and language. This gives the notion of place a particular resonance in Wales and reinforces the significance of local...

Cynefin and Wales: The key to the future of language and culture / Cynefin a Chymru: Yr allwedd i ddyfodol iaith a diwylliant

Cynefin can be interpreted in many ways. This blog post explores our understanding of cynefin as permeating across government policy, national institutions and local communities, filtering through...

Do I finally feel a sense of cynefin?

The Curriculum for Wales defines cynefin as ‘the place where we belong, where the people and landscape around us are familiar, and the sights and sounds are reassuringly recognisable’. My...