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I now have a conservation/dialogue set up with Prof Nicholas Royle at Sussex in December. We're going to talk about the state of English in universities, the lunacy of the "education system", blurring fiction and literary theory, and birdwatching. Hopefully it fits the bill for the book.

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Just when you thought...

State school pupils struggle to read long books, Oxford professor claims (msn.com)

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State school pupils struggle to read long books, Oxford professor claims

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State educated students struggle to read long novels, an Oxford University professor of English has said. Literacy rates are in decline, with growing reports of students being less able to read than previous generations. While this has often been blamed on smartphones and social media causing an “attrition of attention”, Prof Sir Jonathan Bate beli…

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hello all,

Lou, Pete and I are going to meet to discuss how to take things forward. We have heard ideas from around six people. We do need more and a reminder email will be coming round shortly.

We are living in a very stressful time. There are glimmers of hope that we have to cherish. These conversations may constitute a way of doing that. But they may also feel like a luxury in our enormously pressured worlds of intensified and accelerated work.

If you have read through these ideas and have a germ of one you want to share, please do add a post. If not, you could ping the idea to any of us. If you want to base your work on research but are not sure how to go about that, there are many of us here who can offer guidance!

Hope to reconvene a meeting before Xmas, but will be in touch via email before then.

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Firstly I would like to celebrate our continued and continuing collaboration.  This always works for me: working with and around others invariably clears some space in which I might make some kind of contribution ideally to something bigger.

I'm feeling this at the moment as once again in the usual unexpected and or roundabout way I find something both in front of me and yet equally connected to places I’ve been intellectually and things I've done and thought.  I think my contribution to the discussion about a working title for this second phase project (better than Murder 2: this time it’s personal) was ‘the other place’ which I quite liked (probably liked more than ‘conversations with others’ )but that was before this new coming together got me at the right angle or the wrong one.  I think this is a result of the conversation the three of us had about kicking back off and either Rob or Lou pitched the question of who the others were, indeed who the others might be.

This immediately connected to a theme of mine which is the place of theory and theorists in all the work I do.  I often pitch this approach as a kind of fandom admitting at least to myself that the thinkers I'm most engaged with are essentially my favourites, my taste, much as I might listen to or talk about musicians or poets.  I guess I wanted immediately to say that in my practice (which is both a good and bad word for it) the theorists would always be part of the ‘others’ with whom I am conducting conversations.  Also they would not be authorities, just muckers in!

This then started to get interesting because I started to consider what kind of role/ position/ status these theorists had and lo and behold I found the thing that I need to write about: the issue I have been considering wrestling with and living out for pretty much all of my career.  This is because thinking about how theorists participate in these conversations meant for me returning to the fundamental question for me as a teacher and also an essential part of my altogether less convincing showboating as a teacher educator.  This latter role I fell into because my college closed and I needed a job but it was odd at first to be presenting lesson planners and schemes of work as someone who'd never seen much use for either. What I did have though was nearly 20 years experience as a teacher of many subjects (largely at A level) but also a decent feeling for the craft of teaching which seemed to me to be much more to do with heart than brain and sensibility rather than skill.  It was also for me about commitment and feeling: it was also something you could never take for granted.  Thus my best and most abiding advice for all the would be teachers who I supported and encouraged was that they must regularly (preferably while in the classroom in the heat of it) ask the fundamental question "what the fuck am I doing?" ( to me the expletive is entirely necessary because this question is pressing and personal) and I've always been caught in two minds about the degree to which you need to have a fully worked out answer.  It functions rather as a provocation and  contrary to Brookfield’s critique does maintain a bit of mystery when it comes to teaching.

Now if the general proposition is stark my experience specifically of being an English teacher doubled down on this question and in this case demands perhaps a clearer answer.  I think in college I taught 11 different subjects and most of them involved to a greater or lesser degree what is now called knowledge transfer: they had specific content and largely the students didn't have it so it needed to be provided to them.  I was never comfortable with this: my teaching approaches discursive and interactive, I was very much engaged in what Barthes calls ‘excursions’.  In all of the other subjects I taught, I had work to do to adapt the requirements of the course to my teaching style (rather than vice versa) but it always seemed to be that English was the exception.  Reading the Ignorant Schoolmaster much later as a university teacher I realised that I had always shared Rancière’s suspicion of (though in my case it was simply lack of interest in) explaining and understanding.  Rancière wrote later that the point where everything goes wrong in instruction is where reading and interpreting becomes explaining and understanding.  English thus has no reason ever to go wrong (though obviously many have tried to nail it down!)

Pretty much my whole career is an English teacher was concerned with this fundamental and joyful reality that  a) the subject I wasn't really a subject and b) wasn't about anything.  Rather like Klee’s brilliant description of visual art, English does not make things visible it's simply makes visible!  I may be ready finally to have a go at thinking this through to explore the premise that if you want an answer to the fundamental question, the ontological question, ‘what is English?’ maybe that ‘conversations with others’ is about as good as you get.

In the late 80s when I was teaching a lot of literature I had a stab at this working on a staple of my work that lesson when you take in a poem or two.  In fact pretentious twit as I was (I can hear the voice of Tony Harrison’s Skinhead from V: “I bet you wrote a poem you wanker you”), I wrote a series of poems, archly entitled ‘At least three versions of the second coming’ about what I thought might be going on when me and some kids got around the Yeats’ piece and began ‘turning and turning in the widening gyre’.  My approach was to firstly try to pitch the ideal (what on earth was I trying to do?) and had it gone perfectly what would it look like and then to try to represent what did go on.  This may be an approach worth pursuing though not as a series of poems!

Anybody else interested in turning this one over?

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Hi everyone! I hope you are all well and have enjoyed/are enjoying still/ the summer!

So Rob, Pete and I had a productive meet up to touch base after what feels a long time to converse about 'Conversations' which i hope has been bubbling away for some/all of you over this past year and since the last time we met. Unlike Rob, my chapter doesn't feel quite so well formed yet but ive been thinking a lot this year about a new module i'm writing and (hopefully!) delivering in the new year on critical digital pedagogies, and i think i'd like my chapter to explore. her's some intial thoughts:

How can (student)writing/ text production be a space of invention where machines (currently...yet...) have no dominion? Rather than surveille for the use of AI in 'proof of knowledge' or 'proof of skill' assessments at the end of modules, how can experimental/ speculative texts produced by students be created to enable them to think-with encounters/integrations with technologies or as networked humans in professional educational spaces? How might these be formulated and presented using 'other' forms of experimental, speculative and contemporary writing to invite conversations/ collaborations between authors/readers/texts to draw meaning?

How does play, re-mix, experimentation open new conversations about being an educator (and a citizen) in contemporary society, and about the purpose of education to repsond to our collective futures?

Will the chapter have conversations between me and the students, or willl it have conversations with the texts as produced by students? Will it explore the conversations made within texts between technologies/ forms/ authors/ readers? All for me to think about now i've committed this to this digital page!

Looking forward to hearing where others are at with your thinking! Lou

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Conversations with Others

Your beginnings or the outline of a chapter or idea.

Who are your others? Young people? Other teachers? Older staff? New teachers? People outside of education? Parents?

Work alone or team up with someone else in the group. See if you can hone your idea into an overview of 150-200 words and share it on here.

Here's mine as an example:

I was fortunate to travel to a Critical Pedagogy Congress in Medellin last October. From there and a conference in Birmingham I met up with three other English teachers and our (online) conversations since are going to be the core of the chapter.

Abstract

This chapter presents a critical commentary on decolonising English (both as a ‘subject’ but also as a language) and originates in an ongoing online transnational charla (chat) between four teachers of English based in four different countries (Colombia, Cuba, England and India). Interweaving dialogue and theoretical ideas derived from decolonial thinking, the chapter begins by detailing the origins of the group before exploring how English is implicated in what it means to be an HE scholar in today’s globalised education systems. It touches on how current Englishes assert their dialectal distinctiveness as culture and meaning-bearing varieties often embedded in diverse historical struggles and associated with past and present imperialisms. Finally, it considers how international charlas such as the one the paper draws on, while inherently decolonial, need to translate critical dialogue into communicative action, and the prospects and promise of that.

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I've been thinking about the idea of lesson 'observations' recently - I might be barking up the wrong tree, but I can't help thinking that the idea of 'observing' a lesson implies a primacy of the visual, a kind of 'ocularcentrism' which biases what is seen over other aspects of a lesson. I would go as far as to say that the 'unseen' elements are, in many cases, more telling than the 'seen' elements. I wonder whether there is a more encompassing term that could embrace a more holistic way of engaging in this process.

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This is partly an extended reply to the Anonymous respo0nse to my last post:

Marking, which I’ve always felt was largely a waste of time, can in the interim be done by machines leaving teachers with one last chance to prove that left to their own devices they can be educators.

The more sophisticated the feedback is the less meaningful it becomes.  Once it flies out of orbit offering  definitive word-, sentence and text level analysis of both text and response the more it meets Baudrillard’s ‘promised end’: “…the emergence… of an equivalent force of inertia, of an immense indifference and the silent potency of that indifference.”

As JB used to say

“We are liberated in every sense of the term, so liberated that we've taken leave of a certain space-time, passed beyond a certain horizon in which the real is possible”

And prophetically:

“Every set of phenomena whether cultural totality or sequence of events has to be fragmented, disjointed so that it can be sent down the circuits”

Moreover:

“No meaning can withstand acceleration.  No history can withstand the centrifugation of facts or their being short circuited in real time (to pursue the same train of thought no sexuality can withstand being liberated, no culture can with stand being hyped, no truth can withstand being verified etc”

And I think most pertinently:

“This inert matter of the social is not produced by a lack of exchanges, information or communication but by the multiplication and saturation of exchanges. It is the product of the hyperdensity of cities, commodities, messages and circuits.”

Assessment was once the icing on the cake: now no need for cake just the sugar-rush of achievement!.  Education now like the internet archive offers everything on short term loan (and less productively).  Students can’t be trusted with knowledge or indeed be expected to take any interest in it so they’re just asked to feel the weight of it for a moment (referred to as ‘the assignment’) and then quickly hand it back (ironically the moment that their ‘grasp’ of it is validated is precisely the moment they let go of it.  AI will of course make this process of domestication ever more efficient unless we can use it to f**k it over

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Also thought you might be interested in this:

https://youtu.be/tnjrDxt6ZTs?si=9Nx7jDkt8xE65Amv

Here’s one of our partners (Adam Dwight from CoWC) showing that full current AI can assess hand written work and provide feedback in a much more consistent and detailed way than any teacher could feasibly manage.  This is alarming to many for all the wrong reasons: the point surely is that if you want to persist with this reductive performative model of education validated by unsatisfying forms of assessment then AI will allow you to do it more and more consistently and reductively. Here is hand-written work impeccably marked and could easily replace those charged with exam marking AND provide relief for all teachers from largely pointless marking of largely pointless homework.

However that is not the point. The point is to see this as the ultimate confirmation of a monstrous mistake! We should never have asked students to PERFORM these kinds of manoeuvres because this simulation of learning was always going to end one way (like VAR) in increasingly forensic examinations of the structural mechanics of texts: a reduction to absurdity. This is the event horizon: the readiness is all!

As Rory used to say:

"Time slips by
Like grains of sand
Just put your future
In my hands.."

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I'd like to work on a 200-word 'Tralfamadorian Perspective' of education. More to follow . . .

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https://url6.mailanyone.net/scanner?m=1qHQwR-000CSN-6M&d=4%7Cmail%2F14%2F1688657400%2F1qHQwR-000CSN-6M%7Cin6a%7C57e1b682%7C10977208%7C9441127%7C64A6DE27348B7026434CB556F63ECD5A&o=%2Fphtw%3A%2Fwtsoew.%2F.cmtseamatin%2Fgz-heaenglcigiarng%2Fennwleroho-a%2F-vnenewk-i-eowagecldndmetmia-oiee-grnnla&s=fSqwWBCaAc-8pI0pfndjMp8RmCE

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I'm not sure if everyone has seen this today but the role of oracy has been debated a lot in the news today, which has been quite interesting to listen to (contextually, it was due to Keir Stamer making some promises about what Labour would do if they were in power, so there is a bit of a political agenda here). But it does bring into question some interesting ideas/debates. It does also bring into question whether oracy will become more and more important in an 'Artificial Intelligence' age (this is something we've talked a lot about lately in our revalidation of our course, as we want to encourage students to present their work more, to test whether their work is really their own). I've attached an article here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-education-reforms-b2370326.html

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I was involved in  great conversation a couple of weeks ago when I was presenting at a research event. I was talking about my previous chapter and whether we can (or I prefer should), teach native English speakers to speak English. I was 5th on out of 6 and after watching the 4 presenters before me was feeling a little daunted. The reason for this was that my fellow presenters were all promoting the transformative effects that various technological resources incuding 1 guy speaking about AI was starting to have on teaching/education. I felt daunted because though I tried desperately to keep up...after 5 minutes I hadn't the foggiest what they were talking about, and I felt like a dinosaur! How would I follow that? But I got up and presented, I opened with the openkng quote from " English is Shit", (and gave the book a great big plug with pictures not once but twice in yhe presentation), and discussed my research. I talked about the various factors now impacting on English language in the 21st century and asked people to question how they conducted and measured assessment in "speaking and listening" and whether they thought it was right. I praised Technology in its ability to enhance communication through speed and ease but at the same time berated it for the destruction of face to face " real time" conversations. I worry that as AI gets more common place in the everyday, and informs the young as they learn to speak, human emotion will eventually be lost from the spoken and written word.
Though initially daunted I needn't have worried. My presentation was met with applause, many said that what was presented made them question the ethics of teaching English people to speak and listen. Whatsmore, questions were also raised around assessment for speaking and listening methods, criteria, standards etc...
Conversations and questions about the ideas I presented went on into the night and continued when I arrived home. I am happy to have left a little scar, on the practice of assessing how English people speak!

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The Ethics of Assessment, Marking and Feedback

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The Ethics of Assessment, Marking and Feedback

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I've been thinking a lot recently about the ethics of assessment - more specifically, the ethics of marking and feedback. In fact, my train of thought goes back to my hazy primary school days in the late 1970s. We were all given the task of writing a story set in the future. I still remember my story to this day about a guy living on Mars. I remember writing about how he was bored with his life on Mars, because he had nothing to do - after all, the robots did all of the work, so he spent most of his time reading and smoking his pipe. The feedback I received stands out till this day - in red ink: 'Nobody would smoke a pipe in the future!' I was surprised by this comment - and I had the inevitable accompanying knock in confidence. But, I kept telling myself, in my story, the man DID smoke a pipe, and in my imagination it WAS the case, so the feedback didn't really make any sense to me. Then the reflective questions started: How can the teacher be so sure about this? What does he know that I don't about pipes (or the lack of them) in the future? I've periodically looked back on this feedback over the intervening years: How could he be so dismissive of my future scenario? After all nobody really 'knows' the future. It got me thinking about whether there is such a thing as 'good' and 'bad' feedback - not just in terms of quality, but in terms of the ethical domain. For me, the 'no-pipes-in-the-future' feedback wasn't just 'bad' in terms of quality, but it had 'bad' consequences - it knocked my confidence and I didn't enjoy writing stories for a long time after that [I couldn't see the point, because I didn't have the same level of insight that teachers had] - after all I only IMAGINED that people would still smoke pipes, but teachers KNEW with absolute surety that people wouldn't smoke pipes. From a deontological viewpoint, I dare say that the 'no-pipes-in-the-future' feedback was well-intentioned. The teacher was probably trying to steer me in the direction of more typical tropes and imagery associated with the future, such as rockets and teleporters - but that raises an ethical issue as well. What makes these tropes better than my tropes? I can only assume that he has long since forgotten this feedback, but, in a strange way, it has stayed with me. In the long term, it has had the (possibly unintentional) consequence of making me much more self-aware of what I write with a heightened readiness to justify the content of my writing. So, maybe, in a strange way, it was the best feedback I have ever had!

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It might be worth looking into the problem of accounting for disparities in terms of luck in education both in general terms, but also with regards to assessments in particular.  Luck (or the absence of luck) is often downplayed or outright dismissed, and it's patently clear that luck is not evenly distributed, especially in terms of opportunities.

For example, what happens if a learner is ill on the day of the exam?  This misfortune could potentially affect the rest of their life.  Or, what happens if a learner has the bad luck of having to get through a course with minimal resources?

Or, more generally expressed - some learners have heaps of good luck and opportunities; others have a very rough ride.  The question is: how could education be reimagined in such a way as to offset the unfairness, which is largely a consequence of the disparities of luck?

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For reference purposes: old fashioned Lit Crit

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I'd just like to write in support of the premise advanced so cogently by Jo (and also implicitly by Ray) that AI could be the real game-changer, that the pandemic, it seems couldn't manage (although it tried):

This is the first I heard of the AI software

Hey Pete and Sarah,

Im sure that you've heard all about this AI software and the ensuing existential panic that it appears to have sparked...

I put one of our past paper 2 questions into it on D83 and this came out. I'd probably have given this at least a C grade... Not bad for 3 seconds' work!

Still, at least they can't take the software into the exam...

Best wishes,

Lynne

Write about how the TV show, 'Deutschland 83' builds and maintains its audience. 250 words.

"Deutschland 83" is a German television series that premiered in 2015. The show is set in the year 1983 and follows the story of a young East German soldier, Martin Rauch, who is recruited by the Stasi to spy on the West German government. The show was well-received by audiences and critics alike for its attention to historical detail, compelling characters, and suspenseful plot.

One of the key ways that the show builds and maintains its audience is through its use of historical context. The series is set during a crucial period in German history, and the writers have done extensive research to ensure that the show is as accurate as possible. This attention to detail helps to create a sense of immersion for viewers, making the show feel more authentic and engaging.

Another way that the show builds and maintains its audience is through its well-developed characters. Martin Rauch, the main character, is a complex and relatable protagonist who is forced to navigate a difficult and dangerous situation. The show also features a strong supporting cast, including Rauch's family and colleagues, as well as his West German counterparts. These characters are well-written and well-acted, helping to keep viewers invested in the story.

In addition, the show maintains its audience by keeping the plot suspenseful and unpredictable. Martin is constantly in danger and the story line is filled with unexpected twists and turns, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. The show also balances the tension with moments of humor, which helps to create a more well-rounded viewing experience.

Finally, the show's popularity has been helped by its international distribution. It was the first German-language series to air on a major US network, and has been sold to over 180 countries worldwide. This helped to expose the show to a wider audience and helped it to become a global hit.

Overall, "Deutschland 83" builds and maintains its audience through a combination of historical accuracy, well-developed characters, suspenseful plot, and international distribution.

This is the reply I gave to that colleague (working on A level Media Studies) who sent me that answer to one of our exam questions which she said (correctly) was a C.  Her immediate thought was that this would preserve exams (because coursework would no longer be trusted).  Lynne and I write questions for Paper 2: Sarah is Chief Examiner and writes Paper One.

Anyway…

I think there’s something really profound going on here that ought to sound the death knell for these pseudo-academic but essentially anti-intellectual forms of education that the Tories have doubled down on in their 13 years tyranny.  Of course as Sarah implies they’re far too dense to see it as anything more than a reinforcement of the need for the kind of tests that seek these kinds of largely pointless answers.

The answer Lynne sent is such a brilliant case study in all of our problems.  Rather in the way forgers like Tom Keating blew open the art market so these ‘forgers’ (now computerised) expose that peculiar form of gaming called exam preparation.  Deutschland 83 is a brilliant text choice and hopefully students and teachers will have had some fun with it (and more) but the computer answer is the lie that makes us realise truth and this is not just Media Studies, it killed English first!

My response to the answer is that it epitomises the kind of generic answer-form that kids are schooled in these days (even easier for a machine) and as Lynne suggests it will end up with a C+ at least.  And yet it has no real feeling for or understanding of the text: it is plausible but never convincing.  As Baudrillard warned us, this is the age of the simulacrum, the substanceless now, the land of ‘could be true’ if only we cared!

It's all about perspectives and these insights often come accidentally  but for me there is a genuine sadness that the opportunity Sarah has provided with a number of products worthy of ‘study’ might only be recorded in an answer to a question like this in this way.  It’s not a bad question, it’s just generically bad to ‘question ’in this way and this applies to all of us.

But how would we cure ourselves of this malaise?  As I have raged and railed against exams for nigh on 40 years people assume I must be for coursework.  Well, this is almost wholly untrue.  Expressed simply I'm actually just against any testing which has significant outcomes and this starts as a generic disapproval of formal assessment and has spread steadily and yet gradually to all forms of assessment on the premise that assessment is the enemy of learning.  indeed I agree with Berardi that “the ideology of merit… destroys the social solidarity of the intellectual force”.  Why then would we continue to assess if something so fundamental is at stake, when it seems so clear that “meritocracy is also a stimulus for ignorance”?

I think we need to see the dominant models of assessment for what they are, contrived mechanisms for creating an Order of Merit.  As such their relationship with learning or ‘the project of education’ is it best incidental.  We are not evidencing learning we are processing individuals as data.  We must stop if we want to reconstitute the autonomy of knowledge and restore a commitment to intellectual work validated by the learners themselves.

We're being baited by ChatPGT as we were by COVID and the question is how should we respond?  The technology has shown as the folly of the knowledge rich curriculum, memorising in the age of computer memory and knowledge at one’s fingertips.  This IS a Philip K Dick short story (or Dark Mirror) the pursuit not of knowledge but performance, the nightmare of the hyperreal.

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I have been thinking a lot about the Government (and Ofsted's) emphasis on 'attitude' and behaviour and how English fits in with this. It is a real concern that classrooms appear to have been identified as a place in which young people are being conditioned to accept Authority. An unquestioning and uncritical acquiescence to authority lurks behind the didactic 'eyes on me' transmission teacher-centred practice that is championed by Gove and Bennett and their acolytes. It seems to me that this coincides with an absolute crisis in the nature of 'leadership' in our democracy - epitomised by the Tweedle Dum / Dee era of Trump and Johnson. Those that support these populists cannot admit that any of their actions are blameworthy and this underscores an emerging imperative in these times of crisis that Authority must be obeyed. As the young are the embodiment of our future, the role of schools and colleges in ensuring that they respond positively and unquestioningly to the orders of their superiors has become an important focus.
How does English fit in with this? I think the insistence on a single authoritative meaning of any text connects with this. Also, that personal responses are not required and a formulaic and patterned response (as might be produced by AI) is preferred (thought not by us). This supports the elevation of English to the status of an 'elite' subject - like Maths. A subject in which proficiency in a technical understanding of how the language works supersedes any pondering of meanings.

Of course, there is a subtext of valorising certain class perspectives and a reinforcement of a normative perspective. Worryingly, there may even be a nationalist subtext: you know: that Shakespeare is the greatest writer that the world has ever seen and that this is somehow infused with a quintessential Englishness..... Key in this thought is that personal (re)interpretations are marginalised.

Also key is that the language we all use on a day to day basis in all its richness, is somehow ruled out of bounds in this sterile well-behaved English classroom. Not just mis behaving but even play appears to have been ruled out. That is the fortress whose walls we have breach.

The bodies that won't sit still. The mouths that refuse to swallow their owner's words in order to parrot standard forms. The minds that want to question: why that? and why not this?

Why funnel and not tundish?

Why my mother and not Mum, mi muddah, or mi mom?

Frantz Fanon French write on post colonialism stated: O my body – always make me a man who questions.

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Being threatened by 'Artificial Intelligence' is 'Real Stupid'

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Being threatened by 'Artificial Intelligence' is 'Real Stupid'

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Jo here! I would be really keen to expand on my recent article for the English Association.

In 2016, ‘The future of Jobs Report’ by the World Economic Forum claimed that the most highly valued skills employers will require in 2020 will be creativity and cross-work functional skills and they asked that the government work with wider partners to re-think current English curricula. In their most recent report published in 2020, the World Economic Forum state that creativity, originality, critical thinking, and analysis are ranked above technology use, design and programming as keys skills that will be needed by 2025. What is more, one of the skill groups perceived by employers as being in demand by 2025 is core literacies. This is because, as Barbara Bleiman outlined in the NATE Harold Rosen Lecture (2020), English is a different model of education where knowledge is made, not given.

Literacies cannot be seen in isolation and are vital skills that are central to education. Even at its most basic level, without being able to read, write and communicate proficiently we are unable to access learning. To be literate is to be creative and vice versa. Gunther Kress was convinced that developments in technology and the way we understand language completely changed literacy and made it more creative.

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Ray here.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the use of AI-generated texts in a possible future GCSE resit classroom (and the implication for, among other things, meaning-making).

For example, in the current exam learners are asked to evaluate texts in terms of how successfully the author has achieved a stated intention with an implied reader in mind.  However, how can we ascribe intention to a text that is generated by AI?  Doesn't intention imply creative agency?  Can AI (at least in its current form) have agency?  Or, is it the case that we might simply be barking up the wrong tree by evaluating a text in terms of intention?  Maybe the prevalence of AI-generated texts will nurture alternative approaches to evaluating texts - maybe in terms of the text's effectiveness at conveying intentions as implied in the original prompts, assuming the the prompts themselves were 'created' by human intervention.  In the event that the prompts were themselves generated by AI, then we might be delving quite deeply to unearth 'intent' - we might have to get used to turtles all the way down in a quest to find the intention of a text.

In a world with widespread AI-generated texts, we can't necessarily assume that the implied reader is human any more.  Might we have to develop interpretive tools for evaluating texts in terms of how an artifically intelligent reader might interpret an AI-generated text?

The evaluation task in GCSE English could certainly become more like a quest or an escape room challenge, as learners would have to seek out the provenance of the text in order to 'unlock' the 'intention', which would then allow them to 'unlock' insights that might enable them finally to evaluate the text.  This kind of 'process' would need a more inventive mode of assessment - not just a sit-down exam!

It looks like the 'evaluation' task in an AI world would involve 'layered literacies' - the learners would truly be investigating the text.

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Thoroughly enjoyed our meeting last week! Thank you everyone. Elizabeth and I caught up after the meeting and instantly started to pick up and pull on threads that we started in our first chapter that we wrote (Chapter 4). Particularly, the 'pandemic' thread in the context of 'conversations' with and between students highlighting English as a key social practice that has been impacted due to curriculum demands, priorities and of course the pandemic.

At the meeting I highlighted the 'irony' of this book being centered around 'conversations' as English specialists we know the importance and power that talk has and brings and yet the curriculum is saying the opposite of that with student now visually reluctant and withdrawing from conversations.

Dialogue is the natural Habitat of the English classroom (or should be of any classroom for that matter!) so we are visualising our chapter centering around
'celebrating' student talk! Exploring what ambition brings through the richness of 'talk'. If you give ambition to students they flourish and that is the function of teacher talk.

The chapter would be underpinned by dialogic teaching; Teaching 'through' and 'for' dialogue. We would like to challenge the dissonance between theory and practice by giving 'real' examples of powerful student/teacher talk, proper dialogue with students with student oracy being the beating heart of English.

Conversations are where we see the social and emotional confidence, that comes out of communication, and encourages empathy. With a nod to 'Story Exchanging Narrative 4' dialogue will be celebrated as a way to draw out and teach students empathy. We will discuss and demonstrate the social practice of how student talk, student expression and student stories are grown from conversations. This will be a chapter of hope, celebrating these conversations with students, their stories and how they benefit from these social life skills.

We can't wait to get started to be honest!
Jo and Elizabeth ❤️🙌🏻

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Nourishing the mind, body and soul (Part 2) 

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Nourishing the mind, body and soul (Part 2) 

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"our model for academic freedom should be the migrant/traveller" - Edward Said

Inspired by the book "The Courage to be Happy" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga - conversing with others is an enriching experience, but having a conversation with the self (as a result of your worldly interactions) is equally so.

The above book is written as a conversation which takes place between a "philosopher" and a "youth". I think someone on Friday touched on the idea of conversing with literary characters - which I think is brilliant. Especially if your perceptions of these characters have changed over time as a result of your experiences/or just having re-read the book from a different perspective.

I think allowing a book to evolve as a series of conversations between self and others could be an interesting approach, and one that could take various shapes/imaginings. I quite like the idea of revisiting my former self when I first started teaching, and becoming a philosopher of my own life journey. That would be quite a reflective process!

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Nourishing the mind, body and soul (part 1)

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Nourishing the mind, body and soul (part 1)

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There were a couple of comments that made me chuckle during our session on Friday – 1. “English is shit” and 2. The dreaded reliance on the teacher toolkits (for which I am guilty when I first started out as a trainee teacher).

When I first started teaching (back when controlled assessments were first introduced *rolls eyes*) I relished the idea of developing a teacher toolkit based on my own experiences within the classroom. But that idea fizzled out really quickly once I realised that reaching a state of excellence was close to impossible when you’re trapped within a system of standards – both for teachers and pupils. As a teacher, it’s disheartening to break out with all that creativity only to learn that the outcome of it amounts to nothing more than a tick box. The growing disparity between curriculum development at KS3 and KS4 is truly depressing. It is no wonder then that pupils find the subject “shit”, because they too realise that there’s little nourishment to be found within the curriculum.

So here are just a couple of ideas I thought I'd throw out there:

1. English as a dietary guideline
Inspired by my current reading into the microbiome and its affect on the mind and body (geeky I know) the idea that our literary choices are a reflection of our human condition is an aspect that I find fascinating. I think it's becoming increasingly difficult to engage children in finding meaning in word and reflection when the world in which they reside is filled with mindless activity.

The word "mindfulness" is rooted in the philosophical acts of intention and purpose - I think seeking seeking out that intention and purpose then becomes a point of nurturing. The idea of presenting literary conversation as a dietary guideline could be rather therapeutic and a source of nourishment if used as a tool for nurturing.

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Hi all,

Thank you very much for inviting me along to Friday’s session. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to a group of professionals who hold this much passion for the subject of English – a novelty I tell you. I am a little awkward when it comes to face to face interaction so forgive me for that. I’ll get there eventually.

It really was a pleasure meeting you all. Listening to all of your ideas gave me much food for thought and helped tremendously in making headway in my current dissertation – so thanks for that!

I’m fairly new to the world of research. But when it comes to the subject of English, I can confidently say that it’s been my happy place long before I entered the world of teaching. Funnily enough, despite having experienced the soul destroying nature of our educational system, my love for English has remained constant, and for that I’m super grateful.

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Hello. I really enjoyed the conversation on Friday. I've been thinking about how we could develop a strong element of research that could underpin the writing for each chapter....
Taking conversations with students / other teachers & Others as a starting point, we could explore what English could and can be as a way of focusing on what people have enjoyed and thinking about how we break out of the straitjacket of the current technicised and de-natured curriculum. These conversations could be multimedia as well of course. We could include poetry, writing, photographs, walking interviews and other creative methods. I like the idea of capturing the different language and literacy identities that are there in West Midlands classrooms and the cherishing of these as precious and vital. The critical writing could emanate from those accounts and that 'data'.

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Loved being a part of the conversations on Friday. The discussion that stayed with me afterwards was the idea of the book as a treasure chest - an adventure where readers can navigate their way through based on where they want to go after each chapter....perhaps as trubyr has commented, this could be to photos, poetry, interviews, word art.....In my own mind, the English curriculum should be stuffed full of the possibilities and a celebration of language arts whether that is writing poetry, crafting memes or banter on the gaming chat so I would love to reflect that. I like the 'seasonal idea' from trubyr - and a couple of the pictures here reflect the idea of growth!

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I've been thinking how we can work together on this and was wondering if creating some 'spaces' to get together to work on it would be a good idea. More challenging to organise and attend of course, but the thought of being in the same physical space with others with paper, pens, discussions or even just focused time to write would bring something different (and much needed!) to sitting at the laptop all day.

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rhizomatic education: community as curriculum

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I loved the energy on Friday for innovation and for defining the structure and character of the project metaphorically.  I suspect we're all striving for 'more than a book' while also remembering that books can still create structures of feeling and that very minor innovations (Jo and Elizabeth's hand, Heather's short story, the vignettes [though loosely constituted]) can act as significant gestures and encourage others to 'see more'.
In striving for our 'anti-genealogy' (which is also tellingly an 'anti-memory') we need to be aware that there is always another way and that applies to us too.  As Kurt Cobain used to say: "Come as you are..."

"The rhizome is an anti-genealogy. It is a short-term memory, or anti-memory. The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. Unlike the graphic arts, drawing or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 21)

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Welcome to the Conversations With Others padlet!

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Welcome to the Conversations With Others padlet!

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It was really lovely to see and talk with you all at our first meeting. The ideas and enthusiam for the new project was inspiring and i am really looking forward to working with you all.
Here's the padlet as promised.
Use it to keep in touch, for ideas, to share writing or thoughts.