In light of recent concerns in the United States and the United Kingdom regarding the rote and restrictive nature of English literature instruction, this article offers an approach to teaching literature rooted not in knowledge, as literary pedagogy is often conceptualised, but instead in understanding. Reading for understanding extends beyond…

Fifty years ago, in 1966, the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English, later known as the Dartmouth Conference, brought together English educators from three nations--the United States, England, and Canada--to discuss the future of the school subject of English. The Dartmouth Conference is now considered to be a watershed moment in the…

Examines the impulses that led to the curriculum reform movements in the United States and Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. (RB)

This book sets out to map the development of English as a subject and how it has come to encompass the diversity of ideas that currently characterize it. Drawing on a combination of historical analysis and recent research findings, it brings together and compares important new insights on curriculum development and teaching practices from England,…

Using recent books, articles, research reports, conference working papers, and publications of Curriculum Centers in English as a base, this study examines and compares two major current approaches used in the definition and teaching of English. In the American approach, the emphasis is placed on the development of a discipline model of English…