An examination of school curriculum documents which guide teaching in Caribbean schools indicate that while some efforts have been made to infuse ESE into some subjects, very little progress has been made in incorporating it into the teaching of English. One pedagogical technique to address this situation is ecocriticism. The authors conducted…

This paper explores GCSE English re-sits in post-16 education. The re-sit policy was introduced in England and Wales to improve national literacy rates, yet persistently poor pass rates have drawn robust criticism of the policy. This article argues that traditional discourses of literacy predominate and contribute towards antagonisms between…

English remains the only subject mandated throughout the years of schooling in Australia. The compulsory nature of this subject reflects its responsibility for the personal, and literate, development of students. Literature has often been charged with the social and moral dimensions of English. Increasingly, in Australia and elsewhere, literature…

In summer 2021, as exams could not take place, GCSE, AS and A level grades in England were awarded by teachers, in accordance with relatively broad official guidance. This guidance stressed that grades had to be based on evidence of candidate work, though what this was, how much was needed or where/when it should come from were not tightly…

This interview and response explores the functionalities of the digital platforms Digital Theatre+ (DT+), Drama Online and Cambridge University Press as represented by the interviewees, with a focus on Robert Delamere's DT+. Delamere discusses the history of DT+, and his vision for it to become a site where students can create 'remixes' of DT+…

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 aim of this research was to determine the standard that was effectively applied to General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSE) and A levels in June 2020 by the decision to accept the maximum of the centre-assessed grade and the calculated grade. The data for this analysis came from the results tables for GCSEs and A levels in 2019 and…

In this article, I outline and theorize about a series of three lessons on playwriting I conducted in a secondary English Literature classroom in Singapore using drama improvisation strategies that I name drama-based playwriting, or DBP. I advance the argument that this genre of creative writing is best taught through the medium of drama so as to…

English teaching that satisfies curricula standards has often been siloed from instruction that advances the goals of social justice. Exasperated teachers may feel they can either meet the day-to-day demands of their profession or teach to dismantle social inequities, but not achieve the aims of both approaches. In this reflective practitioner…

Because of the emphasis placed on nonfiction and informational texts by the Common Core State Standards, literature teachers all over the country are re-evaluating their curriculum and looking for thoughtful ways to incorporate nonfiction into their courses. They are also rethinking their pedagogy as they consider ways to approach texts that are…

This article examines the author's interactions with the teaching strategy known as Reciprocal Teaching, sometimes also called Reciprocal Reading, which involves students learning to read collaboratively in small groups. Reciprocal Teaching typically involves students teaching each other by following a rubric of activities that are aimed at…

Advanced Placement (AP) courses within secondary English education can fail to meet the needs of gifted students in the postmodern era. Because AP courses often are standardized, despite the College Board's efforts to allow freedom in course design, gifted students, as especially attuned to discrepancies between practice and theory, are being…

This paper reports on the findings from a survey of academics responsible for undergraduate programmes in English and examines the extent to which they were aware of recent reform of A level English and had made, or are making, changes to their courses as a result. Our findings demonstrate that relatively low numbers felt that they had a strong…

This paper explores the treatment of London by two authors who are profoundly influenced by the concept of the power of place and the nature of urban space. The works of Peter Ackroyd, whose writings embody, according to Onega (1997, p. 208) "[a] yearning for mythical closure" where London is "a mystic centre of…

Performance in school examinations has remained one of the reliable indices of the quality of education in many countries. For over two decades in Nigeria, students' performance in most subjects on the school curriculum including Literature-in-English has been persistently declining. A number of explanations are offered for this unsatisfactory…