The contemporary South African subject English classroom is a complex space requiring ongoing attention to issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, and frequently manifesting the need to work across historically constructed differences in race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This article reports on one aspect of a broader research…

This paper critiques the impact of neo-liberalism on postprimary education, and in particular on the teaching of English. The paper explores the implications of performativity and exam-driven schooling on the teaching and learning of poetry. The authors argue that meeting the demands of an education system dominated by technicism and…

Poetry, as a textual form for critical study and composition, continues to occupy a significant place in Australian senior secondary English syllabus documents and classrooms (cf. Carter, 2012). Indeed, within the senior secondary English syllabus in New South Wales (NSW), poetry remains one of the core mandatory types of texts for study by the…

The practice of assessing student poetry is neither widespread nor widely theorised. In fact, its absence in the literature is itself worthy of comment and conjecture. This article begins with an account of a writing workshop for pre-service teachers, which highlighted the way participants found themselves tongue-tied when asked to engage in the…

The proposals for the revised National Curriculum in English suggest limiting the pre-twentieth century poetry that GCSE pupils read to "representative Romantic poetry" (Department for Education [DFE], 2013, p. 4). This paper argues that poetry of the early modern period is challenging and enriching study for adolescent pupils and that…

This paper examines the place of poetry writing in the post-16 English curriculum in Malta. In presenting the results of a small-scale study adopting a mixed methods approach, it explores the views of teachers, students and an influential examiner. The paper proposes that while there seems to be an appreciation of what creative writing can…

This paper argues that recent changes to two national high-stakes tests for English--the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in Aoteaora New Zealand and the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in England--have shifted the assessment emphasis further away from poetry than previously and have significantly…

As classrooms become more diverse, not only in North America, but in most Western Countries, calls for more culturally relevant pedagogies that centre the lived experiences of diverse students have taken on greater importance and significance. This is in response to the need for increased engagement and educational success for all learners. I…

Teachers of English experience significant pressure in attempting to meet the requirements of the national examination system, while also seeking to uphold their own ideological and philosophical perspectives on the value of poetry. Drawing on a mixed method study into the teaching of poetry at post-primary level in Ireland conducted between 2007…

In "Language, the Learner and the School", Douglas Barnes recognised that intonation was important to classroom interaction but also acknowledged that his own research team did not choose to analyse it. This article presents instances of classroom talk about poetry and reflects on them using Barnes' concepts of pupil participation, exploratory…

This article considers an exchange between pupils in response to heard poetry, approaching it through a "conversation analytic mentality" informed by the theories of Basil Bernstein. Using his terms, it describes an existing "pedagogic device" of poetry study for schools, to which responses under discussion do not easily correlate. This is more…

The status of poetry both in the writing curriculum and in wider popular culture is best described as mixed (Wilson, 2009). In spite of a strong post-war tradition of enthusiasm for the teaching of poetry writing, it is currently felt to be marginalised in the writing curriculum (Dymoke, 2007; Ofsted, 2007). This paper reports on the beliefs,…

This paper is about a writing and literary translation program called Poetry Inside Out (PIO). Students in the PIO program study poetic form and structure, figurative language, and the fundamentals of literary translation in an extended workshop format. During a typical Poetry Inside Out workshop, participants read, discuss, translate and recite…

This paper offers a historically comparative picture of the latest waves of policy and technological changes that have occurred between 2000-2006 and discusses their impact on the practices of secondary school English in the UK. It draws on data from two previous research projects to explore significant moments of micro-interaction in a classroom…

In this paper we report on one aspect of a qualitative study about an online wiki community, which was developed to build collaborative knowledge about poetry among a group of pre-service English teachers. Our paper explores pre-service teachers' experiences of writing in a digital medium and their perceptions of themselves as writers. We focus…