Overview
In this book, I draw upon research into teachersā practices in developing literacy across the curriculum initiatives in the 11ā18 school curriculum undertaken in a UK context, that of England, informed theoretically by a language based pedagogy (LBP) . Sometimes called genre-based pedagogy or grammatics, LBP draws upon a systemic functional approach to language and grammar (SFL/G). The main aim I seek to satisfy, is to provide an account of ways in which secondary schools in England can devise and implement coherent language and literacy across the curriculum policies and strategies that include explicit attention to grammar and associated metalanguage. Central to this endeavour is that implementing such policies and strategies is undertaken as an integral part of teachersā affordances and day to day curriculum practices in ways that are also theoretically credible.
This first chapter provides a context for the remainder of the book, by providing an overview of initiatives into developing language and literacy in English across the curriculum and associated teaching of grammar from the 1960s to the present day in Australia, the USA and England. It discusses how developing language and literacy across the curriculum is nothing new, and has long been of concern in education in the UK and beyond. The realisation of the importance of language for learning characterised early work in the field by Barnes et al. (1971) and The Bullock Report of 1975. At that time, however, the theoretical underpinnings of what a pedagogic grammar (or as Halliday (1996) and latterly Macken-Horarick (2011) have called it, āgrammaticsā) could look like had yet to be developed, which it now has. I discuss the ideological clashes in relation to the teaching of grammar that characterised the introduction of the National Curriculum in the late 1980s in England through to the present day, and how various wholescale initiatives such as NLS in the 1990s and 2000s failed to impact upon teachersā imagination and pedagogic practices, particularly at secondary level (see, e.g., Goodwyn and Fuller 2011).
Such failure notwithstanding, in 2013 the government introduced Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) test, taken by all 10ā11 year olds in England at the end of Key Stage 2. Consequently, pupils now enter secondary schools in England with an understanding of grammar. This was followed by national curriculum reforms that reintroduced explicit teaching of grammar, particularly at the primary school key stages 1 and 2 (4ā7 and 8ā11 year olds) and urge teachers at key stages 3 and 4 (11ā14 and 14ā16 year olds) to ābuild uponā this knowledge. There is thus an opportunity to develop further pupilsā and studentsā understanding of grammar and language. However, as Myhill (2018) says, this reintroduction has to be viewed in the context of the highly contested debates of recent decades that have been informed by polemic rather than informed debate, resulting in the incoherent nature of government policy documents regarding both what is meant by grammar and how it should be taught. Such documents and initiatives such as the SPaG test perpetuate the notion of grammar as the correction of error:
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Our own cumulative set of research studies on the teaching of grammar in the L1 classroom in Anglophone settings has illustrated both the rich learning potential of grammar as a resource for supporting metalinguistic understanding about writing and improving writing outcomes, and some of the constraints, such as limitations in teachersā grammatical subject knowledge, and the pedagogical demands of managing high-quality talk about linguistic choices in writing, or using mentor texts in ways that support young writersā linguistic decision-makingā¦grammar in Anglophone countries has had a contested past, and despite some recent resurgence in curricular emphasis on grammar, policy documents reveal the pedagogical incoherence of the positioning of grammar in the L1 classroom.
(Myhill 2018: 18)
Myhillās research and that of others point to the ways in which the concept of grammar is moving away from error correction and towards developing an understanding of how the different genres or text types are constructed and the differing linguistic patternings therein. Thus, the teaching of grammar is currently being increasingly positioned within the context of developing young writersā writing, and especially in relation to the curriculum subject of English. Pupilsā and studentsā understanding of English grammar is thus developed in the context of the texts they are required to read and to write, rather as decontextualized exercises centring upon error spotting. Developing pupilsā and studentsā language and literacy across the secondary school curriculum and all subjects is also a central plank of recent curriculum reforms. In this context, the move away from grammar as error towards construing it in relation to the expression of subject knowledge related to textual organisation and language patternings within texts, provides the conditions whereby language and literacy can be developed incoherent and cross-curricular ways across secondary school subjects.
I show that paying explicit attention to the linguistic patterns and structures through which subject knowledge is realisedāin other words, a pedagogic grammar ācan be of benefit to all pupils and students regardless of their linguistic backgrounds in ways that are socially just and democratic. I also demonstrate how such an approach is not at odds with either pupilsā own sociocultural as well as linguistic identities or teachersā subject identities, discussed in more detail below and in the next chapter. Indeed, the social justice aspect of learning grammar was first recognised in 1818 by the social reformer William Cobbett . Cobbett wrote a Grammar of the English Language that ran to numerous editions throughout the nineteenth century until its final edition in 1901. Cobbett recognised the importance of grammar in relation to taking part in public life. He wrote the grammar as a series of letters, directly addressing a fictional nephew called James. It was not written as a school grammar, intended for the working man so he could learn the language of public discourse in order to take part in it. In the preface he writes:
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The actions of men proceed from their thoughts. In order to obtain the co-operation, the concurrence, or the consent, of others, we must communicate our thoughts to them. The means of communication are words; and grammar teaches us how to make use of words. ā¦to be able to choose the words which ought to be employed, and to place them where they ought to be placed, we must become acquainted with certain principles and rules; and these principles and rules constitute what is called Grammar.
(Cobbett 1818: 10)
For Cobbett then, grammar was conceived in relation to textual organisation as well as sentence structure, and more in terms of rhetoric than the naming of parts.
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The particular path of knowledge to be pursued by you, will be of your own choosing; but, as to knowledge connected with books, there is a step to be taken before you can enter upon any path. In the immense filed of this kind of knowledge, innumerable are the paths, and GRAMMAR is the gate of entrance to them all. And, if grammar is so useful in the attaining of knowledge, it is absolutely necessary in order to enable the possessor, to communicate, by writing, that knowledge to others, without which communication the possession must be comparatively useless to himself in many cases, and, in almost all cases, to the rest of mankind.
The actions of men proceed from their thoughts. In order to obtain the co-operation, the concurrence, or the consent, of others, we must communicate our thoughts to them. The means of communication are words; and grammar teaches us how to make use of words (p. 6).
Grammar, as I observed to you before, teaches us how to make use of words;ā¦ as I used to teach you how to sow and plant the beds in the garden; for you could have throwed about seeds and stuck in plants of some sort or another without any teaching of mine; and so can any body, without rules or instructions, put mases of words onto paper; but to be able to choose the words which ought to be employed, and to place them where they ought to be placed, we must become acquainted with certain principlesā¦called Grammar.
(Cobbett 1818: 11)
Cobbettās sentiment is as true today as it was in 1818: namely, that grammar can be empowering, particularly when construed in relation to developing articulate and fluent expression of knowledge and thought. Chapter 2 explores this point further.
The challenge that faces educators today is (a) how grammar is construed and (b) how it should be taught. Research is telling us, including that undertaken for this book, it is most likely to have an impact upon language development if undertaken in the context of reading, analyzing and crafting texts, where attention is paid to function as well as form. Today, as Wyse (2017) so amply illustrates, we are more aware than ever of the inherently creative, diversity and richness of writing and its associated practices that move us ever increasingly away from the notion of writing as predicated upon an invariable set of rules.
Debates about teaching grammar today are also set against a changing demographic within England, where, in common with many urban areas of the UK, pupils and students have been born in England but have a home language other than English as their mother tongue. Throughout this book, I use the term pupils to refer to young people between the ages of 11 and 16 (key stages 3 and 4) and students to young people aged between 16 and 19 (Key Stage 5). A major education challenge facing schools and teachers is developing such pupilsā and studentsā language and literacy across a curriculum designed for pupils and students for whom English is an L1. There is a growing body of research, particularly that undertaken in Australia (discussed further below) since the 1990s, that shows the ways in which explicit attention to language can accelerate pupilsā and studentsā development of subject literacies as part of mainstream curricular practices, and of EAL pupils in particular. This research has been informed theoretically by SFL/G.
In mainstream schooling in England, pupils and students come from a wide variety of language backgrounds and those designated EAL are taught predominantly in mainstream classrooms, as illustrated by the three schools discussed from Chapter 3 onwards. The challenge teachers face in such situations, is how to adapt curricular and pedagogic practice so that pupilsā and studentsā literacy develops through the key stages regardless of linguistic and social background. This is also in the face of the fact that pupils and students come to school with varying degrees of cultural capital that places many of them at a de facto disadvantage (Bourdieu 1973; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). This point is picked up on and expanded in Chapter 2 in relation to the ways in which LBP draws upon Bernsteinās (1991, 1996) theory of...