Mark A. Pike

The state and citizenship education in England: a curriculum for subjects or citizens?

This paper evaluates the extent to which the implementation and assessment of the new citizenship curriculum in England treats learners as citizens or subjects by evaluating whether the interests of state or citizen predominate. Philosophical, contextual, and practical perspectives on citizenship education are drawn upon to evaluate mechanisms which mediate state power in young citizens’ lives. Current methods of delivering and assessing the citizenship curriculum in schools are challenged and the ideology underpinning citizenship education, as conceptualized in official discourse, is questioned. The view is advanced that citizenship cannot be reduced to what learners know (the informed citizen) or do (the active citizen) as it cannot be divorced from who they are. This paper focuses on citizenship education in the context of English liberal democracy but has a wide application as it addresses issues relevant to the state education of citizens elsewhere.

Faith in citizenship? On teaching children to believe in liberal democracy

The recently introduced and compulsory citizenship education in English schools seeks to prepare children for life in a liberal democracy and is concerned with far more than the acquisition of skills and knowledge; it privileges particular forms of action, behaviour and ways of thinking. I argue here that education for democratic citizenship (EDC) promotes commitments, dispositions and attitudes in children and I question the right of the secular state to foster allegiance to certain beliefs and values when the assumptions upon which they are based are generally hidden from children and are far from universally shared. I explore the importance of religious education (RE) for citizenship and draw attention to the tensions experienced by believers who cannot entirely endorse the liberal democratic values enshrined in citizenship education. Finally, I consider the cultural disinheritance of the Christian faith in citizenship education and propose ways forward which value the religious and cultural inheritance of young citizens.

Aesthetic Distance and the Spiritual Journey: Educating for spiritually and morally significant experiences across the art and literature curriculum

A central thesis of this paper is that the aesthetic travelled by learners, when they respond aesthetically to literary and visual works of art, can be the territory across which spiritual journeys are made. Examples are, therefore, given of literary and visual works of art that can provide such spiritually significant distance. The potential for childrens everyday experiences, in literature and art lessons, to be of spiritual and moral worth is examined with reference to the role of the teacher, teaching methods, language and subject ideology. The complexity of the relation between the spiritual and the aesthetic is itself explored.

The canon in the classroom: Students' experiences of texts from other times

This paper examines the debate about the English literature canon in schools. It evaluates the importance of the canon in a 21st-century curriculum and considers its relevance to adolescent readers saturated in early 21st-century culture who have disparate identities and diverse backgrounds. The implications for teaching and learning of the chronological, social, cultural, and linguistic distance between pre-20th-century canonical texts and todays readers are examined in the light of the theoretical perspectives of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser. These perspectives are applied to findings from a recent 3-year longitudinal case study of 13-16-year-olds reading canonical texts and of the responsive teaching they experienced.

Values and visibility: the implementation and assessment of citizenship education in schools

This article demonstrates that while the more obvious and visible forms of citizenship education (such as introducing it as a new subject on the timetable and a public examination option) are being endorsed and promoted in official discourse, less visible forms (such as attending to ethics and values across the curriculum or the impact of assessment policies on school ethos) are receiving insufficient attention. Examples are provided from recent research to illustrate the importance of values both across the curriculum and in the assessment of citizenship. It is argued that if children are to see beyond the boundaries of their own lives they need to see their citizenship as more than a subject. The conclusion is drawn that the visibility of citizenship must be ethical, and even spiritual, if it is to cope with the complex moral matter of helping children to live in a liberal democracy.

Religious freedom and rendering to Caesar: reading democratic and faith‐based values in curriculum, pedagogy and policy

In this article I synthesise and apply elements of political and reading theory to demonstrate how central themes in learners’ lives (such as freedom, faith, autonomy, equality, rationality and rights) can be read and interpreted differently. I suggest that policy and pedagogy for citizenship and democratic education informed by research into reader response can shift the locus of control not simply from state to citizen but towards an understanding of the transaction between the two. To promote ethical participation I propose changes to the ‘text’ of the curriculum and the ‘reading’ stance of learners so that learners are liberated to bring legitimate moral and religious conviction to their readings of state‐sponsored values. I conclude that young citizens are respected and freedom is protected when educational readings become more nuanced and move beyond the polarities of freedom and restraint, autonomy and heteronomy, public and private, aesthetic and efferent, faith and reason, secular and religious or even democratic and faith‐based.

On Being in English Teaching: A time for Heidegger? 1

Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time (1926/1962) addresses the question of the meaning of being and provides a powerful philosophical basis for construing English teaching as a form of engagement and ‘being-with’ students which acknowledges the aesthetic nature of literary study. For Heidegger, we do not engage with the world or with works of literature in a way that permits them to be reduced, paraphrased and explicated as aims and objectives, enacted according to designated methods or even understood through systematic reflection. At a time when English teaching is being conceived as a technology with which to get something done or as a vehicle which ‘delivers’ a subject in an efficient or effective manner, and when rational analysis and explicit teaching are all that appear to be required, Heidegger provides us with a valuable position from which to resist the forces of utilitarianism and defend the centrality of the aesthetic in English. In the face of the encroaching rationalism and the current obsession with efficiency, measurement and target-setting within English education, particular value is to be found in Heidegger’s insistence that there are aspects of our knowing that are simply not open to scientific or rational understanding because we are always placed in a situation (in for Heidegger means engagement and involvement not physical placing) that cannot be exhaustively analysed. For Heidegger, knowing is a mode of Dasein (givenness, existence or there-being) (Heidegger, 1926/1962, p. 7) which is founded on the involvement which he terms In-der-Welt-sein or ‘Being-in-the-world’ (pp. 52–62). This has significant implications for English teaching today, where knowing is increasingly privileged over being.

Transaction and transformation at Trinity: private sponsorship, core values and Christian ethos at England's most improved academy

The Academies Programme in England, whereby new schools may be privately sponsored and managed but publicly funded, has expanded rapidly with over 200 academies already open before 2010 and many more likely given the education policies promoted by Michael Gove as Conservative Secretary of State for Education. A significant number of academies are sponsored by Christian organisations and this article draws upon the authors recent case study of Trinity Academy which has both a business sponsor and a Christian ethos. Trinity Academy, which is located at the heart of a former mining community in South Yorkshire and serves a social priority area with a history of educational underachievement, was designated ‘Englands Most Improved Academy’ and the ‘Most Improved School in Yorkshire and Humberside’ just prior to the commencement of the research. In this article the contribution made by Trinity is assessed and the perspectives of sponsor, school leaders, teachers and 14‐year‐olds are evaluated. The concept of the ‘transaction’ to indicate exchange and interdependence informs both research design and analysis. The nature and quality of transactions between those who ‘author’ the authorised ‘texts’ of school life and the young people and teachers who ‘read’ and respond to these value‐laden ‘texts’ at Trinity Academy are reported. The conclusion is drawn that transactions between Trinity Academys students, its ‘secular’ core values and its Christian ethos, and also between the public and private sectors, have supported an innovation in schooling that has transformed the opportunities and life‐chances of young people. Transactions such as those at Trinity are advocated as an ethical and socially just means of bringing about transformation in educational attainment while providing moral education that fosters autonomy and critical thinking.

Towards an ethical ecology of international service learning

International Service-Learning (ISL) is a pedagogical activity that seeks to blend student learning with community engagement overseas and the development of a more just society. ISL programmes have grown as educational institutions and non-governmental organizations have sought to achieve the goal of developing ‘global citizens’. However, Service Learning (SL) in general and International Service-Learning (ISL) in particular remain deeply under-theorized. These educational initiatives provide policy-makers with a practical response to their quest for a ‘Big Society’ and present alluring pedagogical approaches for Universities as they react to reforms in Higher Education and seek to enhance both the student learning experience and graduate employability. After outlining the development of ISL in policy and practice, this paper draws on the rich tradition of ISL at one British university to argue that ISL is a form of engagement that has the potential to be ethical in character, although a number of factors are identified that militate against this. The contention is that ISL which promotes rational and instrumental learning represents a deficit model and, therefore, ISL is conceptualized here as a transformative learning experience that evinces distinctly aesthetic and even spiritual dimensions. Upon this theoretical groundwork is laid the foundations for conceptualizing ISL in ways that ensure its ethical integrity.

Action research for english teaching: ideology, pedagogy and personal growth

Abstract This article takes as its starting point the notion that the extent to which action research is accepted or rejected as a valid means of enquiry and professional development is largely determined by occupational culture and the ideology of individuals who corporately constitute that culture (Adlam, 1999; Li et al, 1999). Here, the view that the values and ideologies of teachers cannot be separated from their teaching or research into their teaching (Day, 1998) is illustrated in relation to a politically significant and strategically placed group of teachers. With the advent of the National Literacy Strategy in high (secondary) schools in the United Kingdom, there is a need for English teachers to reevaluate the nature of the subject they teach, which is being redefined, as well as their pedagogy. The beliefs of this distinct group of practitioners are explored, and it is suggested that they are positioned, ideologically, culturally and politically to be receptive to and benefit from action research. As the current emphasis on literacy and therefore on the ‘adult needs’ and ‘crosscurricular’ models of their subject contrasts sharply with this groups timehonoured valorisation of the ‘personal growth’ model of English characterised by imagination and creativity, action research is seen to provide an opportunity for these practitioners to reflect on their ‘conscious and unconscious doings’ (Altrichter et al, 1993, p. 6). Throughout this article, reference is made to the authors experience of conducting a 3-year longitudinal action research project as a high (secondary) school teacher of English funded by the ESRC (Pike, 2000a,b,c,d, e), although the intention in this article is to explore the degree of epistemological and ideological congruence between the values and beliefs of English teachers, and some prevalent features of action research