Anne Turvey

Writing and Teaching Writing

This article investigates the difficulties faced by trainee English teachers when they teach writing. As newcomers to the profession, they are trying to understand the processes involved in becoming a writer. At the same time, they are asked to focus on the forms and features of different kinds of writing as a way to meet ‘writing objectives’ laid down in a number of curriculum documents. When the student teachers do approach writing as a process, they sometimes see it as a process of progressively acquiring discrete skills, such as ‘writing descriptions’ or ‘using complex sentences’. The experiences of five trainees are examined with a view to understanding how their subject knowledge about writing might be developed by those working with them, in universities and in schools.

English Teachers--Born or Made: A longitudinal study on the socialisation of English teachers

Much has been made in recent years of the different views teachers of English hold of their subject, but little work has been done on how these views are formed, or indeed how they may change over time. This paper, based on a longitudinal study conducted over two years, tracks one cohort of student English teachers, through their one-year post graduate course, at one department of education, into their first year of teaching. The research also provides detailed case studies from two other institutions.

From pre-service to early-career English teacher in the UK: negotiating powerful myths

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate contemporary pre-service English teacher education in the UK and the transition, for one individual, from pre-service into early-career English teacher. The investigation explores how standards-based education reforms are narrowing the scope of professional practice in UK schools, especially in regard to the creativity of teachers and students. Design/methodology/approach The authors use critical autobiography (Haug, 1992; Miller, 1995; Rosen, 1998) and dialogic storytelling strategies (Doecke and Parr, 2009; Parr et al., 2015), that are grounded in Bakhtinian (1981) theories of language, education and creativity. Findings The essay critically illustrates how standards-based reforms are narrowing the professional practice of English teachers in secondary classrooms in England and compares this with one account of pre-service teacher education in which prospective teachers are taught to appreciate the situated nature of teaching and learning and the power of creative practices to engage students in their learning and development. Originality/value The critical and creative use of dialogic storytelling strategies allows the authors to present rigorously contextualised accounts of English teacher education and English teaching in England. The reflexive accounts complement the increasing numbers of studies that are showing the injurious effects of standards-based education reforms on English teaching and learning in schools.

Difference in the Classroom

The social multiaccentuality of the ideological sign is a very crucial aspect. By and large, it is thanks to this intersecting of accents that a sign maintains its vitality and dynamism and the capacity for further development. A sign that has been withdrawn from the pressures of the social struggle – which, so to speak, crosses beyond the pale of the class struggle – inevitably loses force, degenerating into allegory and becoming the object not of live social intelligibility but of philological comprehension.