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A Level to University EnglishQueen Mary University of London, March 2012
Gary Snapper
Brunel University School of EducationCheney School, Oxford
National Association for the Teaching of English
Connections with University English
• Recently completed PhD study of transition between A Level and University English
• Continuing research into Post-16 English at Brunel University
• Worked with HE English Subject Centre on transition issues and on A Level curriculum issues
Background
• A Levels – Latin, Greek, Ancient History (!)• Read English at Cambridge• PGCE• Taught English (11-18) in comprehensive schools in
Cambridge, 1989-2003 (inc. A Level and I.B.)• Head of English at Impington Village College,
Cambridge, 1995 – 2001• Part-time PhD at Institute of Education, London, 2002 -
2008)• Now teaching A Level only at Cheney School, Oxford
Today
1. Developments and issues in A Level English2. Issues in A Level / University English transition3. General implications for first year at QMUL4. Issues for teaching poetry/narrative, medieval,
Shakespeare, theory/reading/interpretation
Opening discussion:Personal experiences of:(a) A Level (b) transition (c) teaching first year students
Developments at A Level
• New A Level syllabuses (‘specifications’) introduced in 2008• Most significant changes in English Literature for many years• Greater emphasis on developing broader knowledge about
literature• Increased focus on concepts and genres, comparative study
processes of production and consumption, critical and theoretical ideas, independent study, wider reading, creative responses
• Decreased focus on atomistic readings of set texts, whole class ‘drilling’ and ‘spoon-feeding’, ‘transmission pedagogy’
• NB – 5 different syllabuses all with different approaches + Literature/Language syllabuses too…
Example syllabus – AQA B
Unit One – ASPECTS OF NARRATIVEUnit Two – DRAMATIC GENRES: TRAGEDY /
COMEDYUnit Three - TEXTS AND GENRES - ELEMENTS OF
THE GOTHIC / THE PASTORALUnit Four - FURTHER / INDEPENDENT READING
Note emphasis on narrative, genre, independent reading
Other syllabuses (5 in all)
Options on other syllabuses include:• application of unseen extracts to prior thematic / contextual wider reading
and set text study• 3000 word extended essay on three texts including Shakespeare• unseen poetry exam• study of production and reception in drama
Most / some of the syllabuses include:• elements of genre study • independent study • application of study of criticism/theory
Some include options for ‘re-creative’ writing
Institutional context: some issues1. Subject Knowledge
• Teachers have limited time for development of subject knowledge (average teacher likely to be engaged in teaching or admin in school for c. 35 hours per week, with marking, preparation and reading in addition) and limited access to literary critical resources
• Widely varying levels of subject knowledge, expertise and confidence amongst A Level teachers
• Teachers need to be experts in basic literacy, language, media and drama as well as literature – from the virtually illiterate 11 year old to the Oxbridge hopeful in one day
• A Level groups are often hugely mixed-ability: implications for what can be covered
• A Level changes (e.g. theory….) have been introduced at short notice with minimal training and time for development, on the back of many years of relentless under-resourced curriculum change– Virtually no sharing of expertise with 6th Form Colleges or Universities– Developing 6th Form teaching has not been a priority for many years
Institutional context: some issues2. Exams, Assessment, Money etc.• In 11-18 schools, less focus on Sixth Form teaching and learning (performance
culture, league tables, etc) – and 6th form teaching likely to be less than 20% of work. Reduced funding for 16-19 education has resulted in reduction in A Level lesson time
• The exam system is heavily focused on assessment and standardisation rather than the messiness and freedom of learning
• Anxiety about ‘performance’ – results, data, league tables, inspections, university entrance, etc. – often drives schools, teachers and students, and can lead to safe, reductive and narrow approaches and obsessive focus on assessment objectives throughout the system
• Culture of teaching ‘towards the test’ – set texts and little else – is often deeply entrenched, even despite recent changes, and not helped by lack of time and subject knowledge.
Positives…
• The changes have broadened the scope of A Level English
• There is much excellent practice by teachers and great work by students
• Many teachers have embraced the changes wholeheartedly
What will all students have done?
• 12 texts (some chosen by the student) including:– At least one Shakespeare play– At least one other 1300-1800 text– At least two 1800-1945 texts– At least one post-1990 text– At least 2 poets (or selections of poetry)– At least 2 novels– At least 2 plays
• Beyond that, virtually nothing can be guaranteed…. (see later: Mind the Gap)
• Should we have a curriculum that specifies concepts rather than texts?
Research Project
Beyond the Words on the Page:A Study of Transition from A Level to University English
Impetus – from own teaching practice
– General concern about narrowness of A Level English Literature, and its failure to modernise in the light of changes in HE English
– Concern about many students’ ‘cultural obedience’ / lack of connection between own cultural values and literature / lack of engagement with ideas about ‘literature’ rather than ‘set texts’.
– Conviction that aspects of the HE English ‘curriculum’ might offer ways forward for A Level – e.g. less reverent, more theoretical approach
Research into transition from A Level to University (English)
• PhD research, Institute of Education, University of London• Case study of one class of 1st year students at a top-end ‘new’
university (average grade profile – B at A Level) with a high-performing English dept
• Study followed students and lecturers for one year• Data from weekly observations of core lectures and seminars, +
interviews with students and lecturers• Particular focus on core theory/ways of reading module• Emphasis on experience both in VI form and in HE• Very little existing research of this kind (in HE or VI form)• Students had done pre-2008 A Level
Research focus
How do students deal with the conceptual demand of the HE course? - e.g.
• understanding of disciplinary frameworks and boundaries • extent and nature of reading and thinking
How do lecturers accommodate students’ learning needs in these respects?
How well does A Level prepare for this?
Some broader issues
• To what extent can / should Sixth Form align with / prepare for university study?
• To what extent can / should HE align with / build on students’ A Level experiences?
• To what extent can HE curriculum and pedagogy provide a model for sixth form?
• To what extent can Sixth Form curriculum and pedagogy provide a model for HE?
Background / Literature ReviewHistory of English Studies in universities and schools, with specific focus on debates about the nature of post-16 English (A Level and HE), especially since the 1960s. + (Limited) research evidence from classrooms
1. Consistent criticisms of A Level (Literature) from both secondary and higher sectors for:
• narrowness and conservatism• old-fashioned modes and methods• lack of theoretical framework • lack of engagement with cultural analysis and applications
2. Consistent lack of communication / co-operation between university and secondary sectors
3. Growing concern in HE with:
• how to provide ‘epistemological access’ in context of cultural diversity, widening participation, diversity of values - ‘Understanding University Learning’
4. Post-16 policy developments:
• RAE in universities• development of HE Learning Academy / Subject Centres with remit for
curriculum/pedagogy• Curriculum 2000 (failed)• Tomlinson Report (rejected)• growth in interest in IB• A Level 2008 developments
Some research issues
• Generalisation from one case study must be made with care
• Ideally, we need more researchBUT• The case study takes one random, typical,
average group and identifies issues likely to be of common concern
Data 1
• Observations of core seminar and lecture every week for one year (theory/ways of reading)
• Interviews with seminar lecturers twice each term
• Interviews with focus group of seven students twice each term
• Interviews with individuals from focus group• Questionnaire data from whole class
Theory module
• Module on Ways of Reading – Texts and Interpretations
• Set texts (all three genres, ranging across periods, from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot to Caryl Churchill, interspersed with study of literary theories, using Literary Theory reader (Rivkin and Ryan) as core text
• Limited core English in first year: most options in second and third year.
Findings: Headlines 1 – A Level
• In some respects, A Level Literature (Curriculum 2000) prepared students poorly for demands of the HE English course:
• Little introduction to the likely content of a university course• Little introduction to HE research skills / teaching and learning conditions (lectures,
libraries, etc.)• Little secondary/critical reading• Little reading in or out of class beyond a few set texts• Little sense of study shaped by broad disciplinary frameworks – e.g. genre,
narrative, form, representation, history.• Little sense of consideration of broad cultural contexts – literature ‘in the world’ –
and issues (the canon, value, purposes of literary study, etc)• Little chance to make cross-disciplinary connections
Findings: Headlines 2 - HE
• The HE course introduced students to a wide range of stimulating texts and ideas, emphasising frameworks, theories, contexts, etc. Students often expressed surprise at and interest in these.
• However, lecturers sometimes did not pitch curriculum and pedagogy at an appropriate level (given students’ prior knowledge and experience, and their varied motivations for learning) and many students became alienated and confused.
Findings: Headlines 2 - HE• The modules often did not start from where students are or engage with /
build on students’ varied motivations or rationales for study • Lecturers often seemed to over-estimate students’ existing knowledge
base and intellectual confidence• Meta-cognitive support for students - access to theoretical discourses and
self-positioning at a level with which students could engage - was often weak (partly because of restricted teaching time). Opportunities for student voice to be heard were limited. Likewise for collaboration and discussion.
• Many concepts covered were pitched inappropriately but could be accessible given more appropriate presentation and pedagogy, Critical theory reader was too hard for unmediated study at this level.
• Because of these difficulties, many students were silent in seminars and many became alienated as the course progressed, and adopted ‘instrumental’ approaches to learning.
Some difficulties for students• Reading widely and quickly, especially in pre-twentieth century literature• Negotiating the secondary literature of literary scholarship• Understanding / assimilating purposes, methods, parameters and
frameworks of literary study (note-taking, research skills, etc)• Engaging with broad socio-cultural-linguistic aspects of literature, especially
those beyond the analysis of the fictional world of the single text• Poetry – technical and aesthetic aspects; understanding the genre, its forms
and conditions• Seeing literary texts as part of a real world beyond the classroom of the
production, consumption, reception and interpretation of texts in a social context rather than as objects for analysis in a classroom
• Recognising and addressing cultural/political references, allusions• Skills of close reading
Mind the Gap: Things That Even An A Grade Student
Might Have Some Difficulty With
• They have done ‘texts’ and have a limited sense of ‘contexts’ and ‘interpretations’
• The ‘gap’ is in the area of:concepts, forms, genres, styles, histories, movements, values,
cultures, politics.• They need to move from ‘texts’ to ‘literature’• To what extent are they ready for theory?
• Poems / poetry – overview of poetic form? – understanding of the craft and motivation of the poet?– understanding of oral origins of poetry, poetry as performance / sound-
world / storytelling / language-play?– grasp of poetry as something that exists outside the classroom and has real
readers?
• Plays / drama-theatre– overview of dramatic form and origins of drama in poetry / performance /
ritual?– understanding of the development of drama / theatre from stylised ritual to
realism etc?– sense of drama as collaborative, social, etc?
• Novels / the novel– the rise of the novel?
• History, language, genre, movements, culture– Old English, Middle English, Modern English?– Periods and movements – e.g. modernism?– Different levels of form and genre: poetry v prose? form v genre? genre v sub-genre?
etc.– Literature as part of culture and language; as a contested element of culture?
• The agency of writer and reader– The agency of the writer
• the choices that inform ‘plot, character, theme’• stylistic and narrative techniques – form, tone, voice, perspective, characterisation, chronology,
imagery, etc? • metaphorical and representational ‘schemes’• the deliberateness (and otherwise) of ambiguity
– The agency of the reader• The reader as critic – what is criticism, what is it for?• The reader as theorist – what does theory have to do with literature anyway? • The reader as active / creator / author / interpreter• The reader as political • The reader as linguist• The reader as more than obedient ‘appreciator’
Meta-cognitive issues: where self meets the discipline, where the personal becomes the cultural , coping with defamiliarisationvalues, attitudes, motivations, self-positioning, understanding the agenda, seeing English as being about ‘literature’ not ‘texts’, ‘getting’ the need for theory:
At A Level, an overwhelming focus on what a text means rather than how it means it gives little opportunity for students to engage in discussion/activity which might help them to:
• consider their own – and others’ – feelings about and attitudes towards ‘literature’ and ‘the study of literature’– Pre-theory questions: What is literature? What is literature for? What
is the study of literature for? What has literature got to do with education? culture? politics? What is the difference between reading and studying literature?
• understand the life that literature has outside the classroom• understand the aesthetic nature and impact of literature• understand the parameters of the subject – history, genre, etc.
• Whose agenda – the students’ or the teachers’?• When do students get to talk about what they are doing, and why and
how they are doing it – instead of just being told to DO it?• If students do not understand something, or why something matters, or
are not genuinely engaged in the question, they will resort to cultural obedience, instrumental approaches, reductive pragmatism, silence …
• Even the most able students of literature often feel ambivalent about many aspects of literary study
• To what extent do students have a voice? To what extent do they set the agenda, engage with the agenda – or even understand what the agenda is? (At A Level? At university?)
• Why do they want to study literature? Do they know why themselves?• How do they see themselves and other as readers / students of literature?• What happens when the support mechanisms of A Level are taken away?• Is the’ canon’ of theory at HE potentially as alienating as the canon of literature?• How can students be ‘got on board’ the project of literary criticism?
Some Implications for Pedagogy and Curriculum?
• Getting to where you want to be by starting where they are• Giving students a voice – the vital role of discussion and collaboration –
space to ask the questions they want / need to ask• Acknowledging students’ ambivalences – and tackling them?• Acknowledging the meta-cognitive – the questions students have about
what they are doing, and why and how they are doing it• Signposting frameworks and parameters• Doing things with texts – concrete to abstract and v.v.• Making concrete as well as abstract connections between literature as an
object / activity in the classroom and literature as an object/activity outside the classroom
• Demonstrating why critical discourses matter, why they connect with real lives
• Replacing ‘literature v. my culture’ (reading/media/music/etc) with ‘literature including/connecting with my culture, but also going beyond it’
Further Reading…
• Kathleen McCormick – The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English
• Robert Scholes - Textual Power / The Crafty Reader
• Gerald Graff – Professing English• Ben Knights – Active Reading• Chris Hopkins – Thinking About Texts
Writing
• The problem: students are perceived as unable to structure essays and express ideas effectively
• The issues:– Effective writing is inseparable from effective reading, thinking and understanding– Effective writing has elements which are subject-specific, genre-specific, topic-
specific– Students will write better if:– They know how to read the kind of text they are writing and have seen models– They understand the ideas they need to write about and are genuinely engaged
with them
• In English, we teach students to read literary texts but expect them to write critical texts.– Critical texts need teaching too…– And writing literary texts might help
Re-envisioning literary study at A Level?
In order to address the cognitive deficit :
• the theoretical deficit – exploring the parameters and frameworks of literary study
• the cultural deficit – exploring the nature of literary value and taste, questions of canon, the role of the oral and popular, etc.
• the aesthetic deficit – exploring literature as art which has a life - and an audience - outside the classroom
• the creative deficit – exploring the craft and motivations of the writer
• The performative deficit – exploring literature as performance, storytelling, sound and image, etc.
Re-envisioning literary study at A Level?
In order to address the meta-cognitive deficit:
• Exploring self-positioning: how does the way students (and teachers) position themselves culturally affect the way they approach literature? What does ‘appreciation’ mean?
• Exploring conflicts of values: between ‘education’ and ‘assessment’ and ‘qualifications’; between high and low culture; between teacher and student; between criticism and creativity; between ‘reading’ and ‘study’; between literature and language;
• Exploring the agendas and rationales of literary study
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 Mcormick, The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of
English
Poetry: worst-case scenario!• Students (and teachers) do not read poetry and have little sense of
the motivation of the poet• Students are often put off poetry by having to regurgitate what they
have learnt about individual poems in GCSE exams• Ambiguity is regarded as a con trick to make exams harder• Poetry is almost exclusively seen as lyric, and mostly modernist.• Students study poems. They do not learn about poetry.• Creative approaches used up to age 14 disappear at GCSE and A
Level• Confidence is low• Subject knowledge is weak• Of course, some students and teachers love poetry, read it, and
even write it, and there is much imaginative teaching…
Shakespeare• Again, Shakespeare suffers from its central role in the
curriculum and exam system – the only specified author that all students must study and be assessed on at all ‘key stages’.
• Shakespeare is saved by a great deal of imaginative pedagogy, work around drama, performance, etc., at KS3 and KS4, so remains more popular than poetry, but many students are ambivalent.
• Understanding of Shakespeare’s language is often weak and unstructured: emphasis is on making the plays palatable through work on narrative and drama rather than language.
• Many students start A Level with limited ability to read Shakespeare independently without teacher guidance, and very little systematic knowledge about ‘Shakespeare’.
Medieval
• Virtually dropped off the radar at A Level - because of lack of teacher and student interest?
• So… carte blanche – a good thing?
Theory
• Only explicitly taught in one of the five syllabuses, and only since 2008
• Occasionally taught by enthusiastic teachers in other syllabuses
• Theory often seen as being about a canon of ‘isms’ rather than arising from a series of questions about culture, language and politics that connect to students’ concerns
• Difficult theoretical texts need mediation in first year
