Michael Young's notion of powerful knowledge is attractive to many: to teachers wishing the best for disadvantaged students, to neoliberal governments that continually stress the need for teachers and students to improve their performance. This essay takes issue with this understanding of education. Firstly, it shows how classrooms are mediated by…

I have spent much of the last two years working in a school in Ramallah, Palestine, supporting new teachers of English. I worked in the classroom, in partnership, sharing the planning and teaching of lessons. This essay is about exploring what happens to texts in a specific classroom context, about how a particularly English text, "Romeo and…

How do students draw on texts read in class to explore and make sense of the world? How does role-play open up the possibilities of utilising these resources, remaking them for their own purposes? How does play, as Vygotsky suggests, enable students to achieve more? And how does being in role change the character of social relations in the…