In October 2023, the California Department of Education released test scores for all students in Grades 3-8 and 11 for the 2022-23 school year. These results represent an opportunity to analyze whether and to what extent student learning has rebounded after the dramatic declines in scores resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and related school…

This piece explores historic trends in the standardization of English education. Beginning with the advent of NCTE in 1912 and continuing through the subsequent century, the article traces how "English Journal" has documented educators' approaches and attitudes concerning standardization.

There has been an increase in research regarding the use of virtual platforms as a means of collaboration between middle level learners and preservice teachers. However, little attention has been given to the role of asynchronous collaborations in the form of virtual literature discussions and the preservice teacher experience. Through a…

Contemporary emphases on standardization, specialization, and selectivity in higher education alienate students and teachers from their own creativity, intellectual curiosity, and personal stories. This trend runs counter to the central focus of honors on fostering a diverse, scholarly learning environment. Authors suggest that integrating student…

Developmental English in urban-serving community colleges was considered as the site where racial and ethnic minority students who are deemed underprepared for college must learn the white, middle-class literacy conventions valued in higher education. The idea of symbolic violence--the systematic devaluation of one's culture--was used as a…

In this paper, we examine the ways in which the conceptualisation of literature and literary study encoded in the inaugural secondary school English syllabus in New South Wales (NSW), Australia can be seen to anticipate the conceptualisation so fervently enunciated in "The Teaching of English in England" -- the Newbolt Report of 1921.…

The Massachusetts Early College Initiative eases the pathway to postsecondary education for thousands of high school students annually. Early college programs provide strategically-sequenced, real college classes with strong career orientations during students' regular high school day. When fully realized, they also provide enhanced academic and…

In this narrative inquiry, the author dramatises the tensions and discoveries that emerged in a literature course for pre-service and in-service teachers in an English education graduate programme. The students' resistance to the instructor's choice of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" as a central text led to reflection on responsible and…

We are living through a historical moment that is marked by a protracted struggle for systemic changes in the United States as demanded by the broader Movement for Black Lives, as well as a visible increase in White supremacist violence. Although studying race and racism should have always been part of the kindergarten through twelfth-grade…

This paper establishes five new facts about instructional costs in higher education using department-level data from a broad range of institutions. Costs vary widely across fields, ranging from electrical engineering (90% higher than English) to math (25% lower). This pattern is largely explained by differences in class size and faculty pay. Some…

What happens when, in a nation under lockdown, teaching moves online? How is English as a school subject being differently configured? What are the gains and losses? This essay examines, through the prism of a single online lesson, the approach to English, to curriculum and pedagogy, that has been adopted by the Oak National Academy website, a…

In evaluating some of Heaney's prose writings about the art of poetry -- what I have called his 'Poetics' -- the paper explores how those ideas could enhance the teaching of poetry in the upper post-primary schools. The paper is divided into four closely interconnected sections. The first section evaluates Heaney's thoughts about the potential…

This chapter considers the case of placement tests, examining students who enter community college gateway math and English courses.

The idea that education should value imagination has lost currency over the last few decades and this has implications for teachers as well as pupils. Situated in a system of increased accountability, teachers in England are arguably less able than ever to act on their freedom and to imagine curricular and pedagogical possibilities beyond those…

This article relies on methods of racial storytelling to provoke the field of English education (and teacher education more generally) to see how race is a white problem. Specifically, I tell and make sense of stories from my experiences as a white high school English teacher and English education scholar to wonder about the potential work white…