Reading the World: School to University

English

A study of transition in the advanced literature

curriculum

IFTE 2011, Auckland

Gary Snapper Editor of… Teacher of…

and Research Associate at Brunel University, London

While so often the schools and the universities seem quite separate…, if… teachers and researchers in the universities begin to engage in more active dialogue with the developers of reading and writing programmes and the teachers who have to teach students – young and older – ‘how’ to read and write, it might be possible to begin to change the dominant significations of reading in the schools, so that more students could begin to learn to read the world simultaneously with learning to read the word.

Kathleen McCormick, The Culture of Reading and the Teaching Of English, Manchester 1994

Reading the World

Reading the Wor(l)d…

• Transition – word to world? – putting the word learnt in the protected environment of school into action / context in the wider world of the university and beyond.

• Paradigms of English - word to world? - : ‘The words on the page’ (Leavis) to the text in the context of the world – literary theory / context and interpretation.

The Issues

• What and how do / should students learn from / in studying literature in the post-compulsory phase (16+)?

• What are the implications for curriculum and pedagogy in schools and universities?

• How are these issues played out in current school and university classrooms?

• What are teachers’ and students’ attitudes to these issues?

The Research Project

Case study of one group of first year undergraduate students and their

lecturers over the course of one year

• Focus on teaching and learning issues in the light of transition from A Level, especially literary issues (reading, response, interpretation, values)

• Focus on attitudes and experiences of teachers and students

The British Context 1

• Students study 3 or 4 subjects only for A Level (or Highers in Scotland) after national exams at age 16 (GCSE).

• A Level is a 2 year course.• A small minority do the International

Baccalaureate instead.• Students study one subject at university

(single honours), sometimes two (joint honours).

The British Context 2

• National anxiety about sacrificing the ‘Gold Standard’ of A Level - narrow, academically specialised, ‘in depth’ study - to a widening participation agenda which seeks to broaden and make more accessible. (‘Dumbing down’?)

• Tomlinson Report 2006 rejected by previous (Labour) and current (Tory) government

The British Context 3

• National obsession since 1989 with prescriptive centralisation, standardisation, functional literacy, high-stakes testing, unsympathetic inspection regime has led to decreased teacher agency and narrowing of student experience towards examination in 11-16 curriculum.

• Tendency towards narrow and instrumental approaches in schools

• Critical literacy approaches struggle to be heard

The British Context 4

English A Level:• Either English Literature or English

Language or English Literature and Language or Media Studies

• English Literature remains prestige course most widely accepted for university entrance to English courses

• Until recently, English Literature A Level had changed little since 1950s. Old-fashioned, prescriptive, canonical approach - list of set texts

The British Context 5

Kate Flint 1976:

‘We receive onto our courses students who believe, as a direct result of this mode of syllabus composition, that “Literature” is composed of unrelated Great Works – ‘this week, we’ll do Spenser; next week, we’re doing The Tempest’ – and hence perceive a university course as a process of ticking off texts from a shopping list of essentials’ […] /…

‘The problem of encouraging students, once at university, to realise the importance of the inter-relating areas of literary, linguistic, social and economic history to the study of written texts is, of course, exacerbated by colleagues who share Leavisite assumptions with those school-teachers who themselves were trained to believe that great literature is about conveying ‘the quality of lived experience’, the transmitting of ‘universal feelings’ which transcend historical specificity.’ / …

Impetus for research 1

• Dissatisfaction with current model of literature teaching at A Level

• Interest in alternative models of literature teaching. e.g., International Baccalaureate

• Personal motivations re literature teaching and need to place theoretically

• Need to establish national picture in neglected area

• Pressing issues of subject knowledge - lit theory…

Impetus for research 2

Key issue in the classroom: cultural value, reader response and the literary curriculum

• Problem of literary ‘appreciation’ and ‘pleasure’

• Untheorised curriculum consisting of list of valourised, canonical set texts studied in isolation

• Students may be alienated from the texts - no appreciation or enjoyment - and/or engaged in acts of ‘cultural mimicry’ to satisfy examiners

• No underpinning epistemological framework - why study texts? - or acknowledgement of contested nature of literature and literary studies.

• Underlying idea of ‘personal response’ - but what kinds of personal response allowed? What about critical response?

• Tendency to passive learning and spoon-feeding: acquiescence in teacher interpretation

• Often narrow focus on single set texts and ‘words on the page’, instead of broader frameworks, concepts, contexts

• What kind of knowledge about literature (and language) do students develop?

Locating the Problem 1

The debate about A Level English Literature 1970 onwards

• Consistent criticisms of A Level Literature from elements of both secondary and higher sectors for narrowness, elitism, irrelevance, lack of theoretical framework, etc.

• Challenge from HE English (literary theory) and from Facs of Education (IFTE, personal growth)

• John Dixon and the School Council - 1970s - fighting for personal response against the canon

• The ‘alternative syllabus’ movement - 1980s

Key Texts

John Dixon: Education 16-19 - The Role of Communication and English (1979)

Brown and Gifford: Teaching A Level English Literature - A Student-Centred Approach (1986)Patrick Scott: Reconstructing A Level English

(1989)

Debate in English in Education and Use of English

Locating the Problem 2

• But… three camps:– Traditionalists: support the status quo

(canonical + Leavisite)– Liberals: in favour of personal response

approaches and broadening canon (Leavisite + ‘London School’ - Britton, Rosen, Dixon etc)

– Radicals: informed by literary theory - argue for radical reform (Terry Eagleton as figurehead) - ‘critical literacy’

– NATE combines liberal and radical positions….

McCormick 1994 - The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English

– Traditionalists: Cognitive model– Liberals: Expressive model– Radicals: Socio-cultural model

‘Readers are socially constructed, interdiscursive subjects, yet not without agency, balanced between determinism and autonomy. They are neither the blank slates that the objectivist positions maintain nor the autonomous subjects of the expressivist model. Texts are neither containers of meaning nor infinitely pliable, but are, rather, always in use...: they are produced under determinate conditions, not read faithfully or solely from a personal perspective.’

Atherton, 2005: Defining Literary Criticism

Core conflict between developing general reader and the specialist critic; Leavis/personal response and critical literacy/literary theory

… In debates about A Level English Literature, the personal and the academic seem perpetually set at odds, as though there can be no possibility of a growth that occurs because of specialist knowledge, rather than being hindered by it.

Mitchell, 1994, in English in Education:

Collective subjectivity is a powerful paradox. English has an ethos in which the personal and subjective experience of each reader is valued; it is about individuals responding to texts, about the growth of sensibility, and about pleasure as well as discernment. Yet at the same time there are constraints on individuality and subjective interpretation: 1) texts are prescribed and implicitly valorised by their inclusion on course lists and 2) texts are thought about in certain ways and not others for the purpose of writing and examination.

Locating the Problem 3

International Developments

• Curriculum reform in Australia - critical literacy approaches developed in 1990s

(e.g. Beavis, 2001) • Curriculum experiments in the U.S. (e.g.

Robert Scholes, Textual Power, 1998)• Increasing influence of the International

Baccalaureate - emphasis on questions of culture, genre, etc.

Locating the Problem 4

The Challenge from Linguistics and Cultural Studies

• Media Studies A Level - early 90s• English Language A Level - mid-90s

• Film Studies A Level - mid-90s

All based on explicit theoretical frameworks for understanding culture, language and

textuality

Locating the Problem 5

The Challenge from HE English Literature

• Following ‘theory wars,’ growing pressure from HE sector to reform A Level Lit in line with the modern discipline - context, interpretation, theory.

• Increasing interest in HE English in developing a modern pedagogy for cultural diversity and widening participation

Increasing focus on transition issues by HE English since 2000, with focus on progressive pedagogy

• Key text: Robert Eaglestone: Doing English (Routledge, London, 2000)

• English Subject Centre (Higher Education Academy) focus on pedagogy - report on transition (Andrew Green, 2005)

• Ben Knights - Active Reading, (Continuum 2007)

• Journal - Arts and Humanities in Higher Education

Broader issues in HE teaching and learning:

• Boughey, Marland (AHHE 2003):‘Epistemological access’ - in context of cultural diversity, widening participation, diversity of values in UK and S Africa - ‘Understanding University Learning’

• Recent research: Meyer and Land (2003, 2006) - Overcoming Barriers to Learning: ‘Threshold Concepts’

Locating the Problem 6

BUT.. policy meets theory 1989 onwards

• Introduction of National Curriculum 1989• The Tory clampdown - 1990s - re-establishing

canon and tradition• Curriculum 2000 and Tomlinson 2006 - failure of

the widening participation agenda under Labour: A Level changes in 2008 - partial rescue

• The Coalition….? ‘English Literature is the best literature in the world..’ (Gove, 2010)

Moving On: A Hypothesis

A Level Eng Lit remains resistant to change, and teacher subject knowledge is

behind the times

HE has emerged from the theory wars and is developing progressive pedagogies based on socio-cultural approaches

A focus on the relationship between the two could be a productive way forward:

what can each learn from the other?

Moving On: What do we know?

Research into Post-16 English Literature teaching and learning

• Very little research conducted into what actually happens in the A Level or HE Literature classroom

• Barnes (1985) - Versions of English (A Level)• Mitchell (Eng in Ed, 1995) - study of one A Level

Lit student as she moves to HE English• Unpublished PhD thesis on A Level Lit classroom• All raise issues about quality of learning and

clarity of theoretical frameworks

Moving On: Research Needs

• Need for research into role of theoretical frameworks in post-16 literary study - curriculum/pedagogy interface

• Need for research into the subject-specific dynamics of the Post-16 Literature classroom

• Need for research into the relationship between A level and HE English

• Need for research into the English ‘cycle’ - A Level student to English teacher via undergraduate and PGCE study

Literature Review/History

• Snapper, G., (2007) 'A Level Revamped: English Literature, the Universities and the Schools', Changing English, Vol 14

• Snapper. G.,(2007) ‘Beyond Curriculum 2000: Some National and International Perspectives on A Level English Literature’, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth , Vol 14

The Research Project

Case study of one group of first year undergraduate students and their lecturers

over the course of one year

• Study based in a well-regarded ‘new’ university dept - student A Level grade profile average B

• Focus on teaching and learning issues in the light of transition from A Level, especially literary issues (reading, response, interpretation, values)

1. Research Questions

• What are lecturers’ and students’ attitudes to and perceptions of A Level English, university English and the transition between them?

• What kinds of theoretical and conceptual understanding does A Level equip students with, and how do these develop and change during the first year undergraduate course?

• What issues, in relation to the theoretical and conceptual framework of literary study, do first year undergraduates and their lecturers engage with in the transition between secondary and higher English?

2. Data Sources

• Multi-layered case study• Observations of all lectures and all one

class’s seminars in the two core modules:– Language and Literature – Literary Theory

• Focus group of seven students • Interviews with individual students, and

lecturers• Course documentation; class questionnaires• Recordings of seminars and interviews

3. Data Collection and Analysis

• Pedagogical and literary frameworks for analysis - what is taught/learnt and how it is taught/learnt

• Researcher perspective: data seen through ‘lens’ of 11-19 teacher; students and lecturers know that I am A Level teacher as well as researcher

• Generalising from one class in one university: all experiences here may be replicated anywhere and focus on underlying disciplinary issues

Data discussion

• Snapper, G. (2009), Beyond English Literature A Level: The silence of the seminar?. English in Education, 43: 192–210

• Account of observation of core literary theory module in first year

• Analysis of observations ‘triangulated’ with data from interviews and questionnaires

Findings: Headlines 1

• A Level Literature prepared students poorly for demands of the HE English course

• Much material in HE first year course pitched inappropriately, especially given above.

• Restricted HE teaching time in combination with inappropriate presentation and pedagogy caused many student problems in first year modules

• Seminars were a highly problematic learning forum, often characterised by awkwardness and silence

Findings: Headlines 2

• Most concepts and many texts covered at HE would be accessible given appropriate presentation and engagement

• HE modules struggled to start from where students are or to engage with students’ motivations or rationales for study

• Meta-cognitive support for students - access to theoretical discourses and self-positioning - was weak at both levels

Findings: Headlines 3

• Lecturers very aware of the theoretical issues behind students’ ambivalent attitudes to literature and learning but lack of time, pedagogical skills and institutional restraints impeded their ability to communicate this effectively and make new theoretical frameworks accessible

• Students tended to see A Level as a ‘golden age’ of teacher attention and clear aims and goals

In summary…

• A Level English did not prepare students effectively for the broader, more conceptual nature of English at university

• But English at HE did not engage students effectively by basing itself on a clear understanding of student learning and identity in relation to the discipline

More Findings

1. Learning 2. Teaching3. Criticism / Theory4. Reading - range

5. Reading - values6. Literature,

Culture, Language, Politics

7. Writing 8. Gender

at A Level and at HE

1. Learning

• Lecturers concerned by students’ ‘instrumental’ and assessment-driven approaches to learning: often attributed to ‘spoon-feeding’ and assessment overload at A Level

• But at HE, most students silent in seminars; many become alienated as course progresses and they fail to grasp content / reading load. This in turn leads to instrumental approaches to learning

2. Teaching

• A Level Lit provides happy environment for most students (though some express boredom with set texts); pedagogy starts from where students are but does not always foster independent study skills or access to broader issues and frameworks

• HE pedagogy may attempt student-centred strategies but can suffer from lack of pedagogical expertise and lack of clarity about what students already know and where they are in terms of learning and motivation

3. Reading - criticism / theory

• Inadequate attention to secondary/critical texts at A Level means students poorly equipped to read - or even understand the nature/purpose of - literary criticism, let alone theory

• Literary theory readings in HE course were far too difficult and almost completely unmediated, especially given above

• Explicit assumption that students know what it means to be a critic

4. Reading - range

• A Level prepares students poorly for the range and quantity of reading they must do: emphasis on close reading of whole single texts rather than on sampling a range of texts in literary contexts

• HE strongly aware of problem with reading demands and attempts to moderate this - but, given the above, needs to adopt more basic approach to frameworks and contexts (eg genres, periods, narrative structures, themes)

5. Reading - values

• Almost all students dislike poetry and studying it. They are often ignorant about its origins, readership, aesthetic purposes, forms, etc.

• Students often feel ambivalent about Shakespeare, and few have experience of literature before the Victorian novel other than Shakespeare

• Students’ personal reading habits often do not reflect literary interests. Almost no students read poetry

• Lecturers perceive students’ dominant interest in internal fictional worlds of prose narratives (novel, drama) led by plot, character, theme -rather than in literature as culture, language and form

• But HE needs to establish new frameworks and rationales more firmly before moving on

6. Literature, Culture, Language, Politics

• A Level prepares students poorly for the fundamental pre-occupation at HE with cultural analysis - culture, politics and language, and their relations with literature.

• Students have little sense of the production and reception of literature in the real world, tending to see texts as material for a particular type of formulaic analysis in exams.

• But students need meta-cognitive support to grasp the cultural, political and linguistic significances of literary study at HE - its frameworks and applications

• Students need opportunities to examine their own cultural positionings, values, motivations, rationales for study in relation to others’

7. Writing

• Lecturers tend to blame poor student writing on lack of ‘the basics’ and generic essay-writing skills at A Level, but data suggests that the main problem may be students’ reading skills / disciplinary understanding

• However, over-scaffolding of essays (‘spoon-feeding’) at A Level may not help as it disempowers students

8. Gender

• Distinct gender patterns observed, and reported by lecturers:– Approximately 70% of students are female– Small number of higher ability males

strongly engaged by theory, politics, history– Greater number of lower ability males

become alienated / drop out / under-achieve– Females often show preference for A Level-

style discourses of personal response but remain on track and achieve well

• What happens at 14-19 to create the gender imbalance in Literature?

• Does the emphasis on personal response and internal fictional worlds at A Level rather than cultural analysis alienate some students and disempower many?

Conclusions 1

• Socio-cultural approaches to literary study, based the modern HE discipline, are potentially liberating

• But the formulation of curriculum and pedagogy at both A Level and HE are vital if such approaches are to be successful

• The canon of HE theory can be as alienating as the canon of literature

• Meta-cognitive support is vital: students need help to position themselves within the discipline

For too long, we have designed curricula to do justice to what we perceived as our subject matter. What I am suggesting is that we stop thinking of ourselves as if we had a subject matter and start thinking of ourselves as if we had a discipline which we can offer our students as part of the cultural equipment that they are going to need when they leave us. We have the whole domain of textuality in our language from which to select what our students will read and discuss with us. We should feel free to use - or ignore - any part of it that suits the goal of student development

Scholes 1998, (pp 67-68) The Rise and Fall of English

As fundamental as the differences between the old and the new vocabularies [of criticism] may be, they are minor when compared with the difference that separates both of them from the vocabulary of those who do not speak literary criticism at all and thus find both old and new versions of the dialect equally strange…To such laypeople, even the slogans of so-called traditional literary study… are likely to sound as jargon-ridden and academic as talk about ‘signifying practices.’ To them, both the old and the new critical idioms represent a kind of insider trading in a market in which they have nothing invested.

Graff 1992 (p 79/80) Beyond the Culture Wars …/

Canon revision has never quite lived up to its expectations. Once the battle is won to teach the heretofore excluded texts, the chronic learning problems tend to reappear. This difficulty has been largely ignored by educational progressives, who are often too quick to blame student alienation from academic literacy on the elitist or conservative aspects of that literacy. The uncomfortable truth is that students can be just as alienated from populist forms of academic literacy as from conservative ones.

Graff 1992 (p 97)

Conclusions 2

• Need to strengthen the curricular links between the two phases, and the ITE phase

• Need for A Level teachers and HE lecturers to learn from each other in pedagogy and subject knowledge

• A Level pedagogy + HE curriculum…?• Need to increase coherence of purpose

between university and school English to strengthen the curriculum at both levels

• Training for cultural analysis and creative production; awareness of– literature as a dynamic cultural activity

encompassing a range of canonical and non-canonical forms

– the particular power of literary texts to represent society through language in many cultures

– social, cultural and aesthetic factors in the production, consumption and reception of texts

– issues of literary value, and the variety of contested interpretations and cultural choices made by readers

– generic aspects of literary language, form, genre and narrative

A curriculum to aim for:

• Students engaged in: – debating and positioning themselves in relation to

questions about literary / cultural value, the canon, and so on

– building an understanding of the role of the critic and literary scholarship

– experiencing and understanding aspects of contemporary cultural production and consumption

– building an understanding of the relationship between the past (canon/heritage) and the present in literature

– building an understanding of the craft and motives of readers and writers, e.g through creative text production as part of literary study

A pedagogy to aim for:

And the good news…

• Changes to A Level English Literature came into force in 2008, as part of a national focus on widening participation

• All syllabuses now involve study of more texts, and many in comparative modes

• Some syllabuses require texts to be studied within explicit theoretical frameworks (e.g. genre, narrative, theory)

• More emphasis on student choice of text, and combining the personal and the critical

Reading the World

There has been reticence amongst teachers of literature and, more recently, literary theorists to conceive of their work within the rubric of reading pedagogy, perhaps largely because ‘reading’ as an academic subject traditionally has had a low status. It is assumed that reading is a subject taught in elementary school and colleges of education, neither of which, in the hierarchies of the academy, is particularly prestigious.

…/

Whether or not they are conscious of it, however, teachers at all levels are always teaching their students how to read. The different ways students are asked to read imply particular values and beliefs about the nature of texts, the nature of readers as subjects of texts and as subjects in the world, and about meaning and language itself… Students need to learn to locate the texts they read, as well as themselves as reading subjects, within larger social contexts: in short, they need to be able to inquire into and understand the interconnectedness of social conditions and the reading and writing practices of a culture.

McCormick 1994 (p 7)