Determinación de factores que inciden en el proceso

The simplicity of this question belies its complexity and the angles of perspective from which an answer may be sought. For a start, Knights (2015:7) notes that:

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‘English’ has never been simply derived from bodies of knowledge generated by experts. Given that the word names simultaneously, a nation, a language and an educational subject, the number of people who feel they ‘own’ the subject is more or less infinite.

We can add to this Walsh’s (2007:47-8) discussion of the ‘geographic and economic reach of the British Empire’ to realise that we cannot answer this question by simply listing topics on current school curriculum or university modules:

English has a presence as a global language which is related to British history and the history of imperialism over the last 300 years. This kind of geographical perspective and long view of the history and significance of the language in today’s world is necessary if we are to have more than a parochial view of what constitutes the school curriculum subject of English.

In countries where English is spoken as the mother tongue: United Kingdom, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, there is a subject on the curriculum with the title English, or variants of this. Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant (2014:1) note that in each of these countries the main subject association has English in the title, or Literacy. However, within these countries there might be more than one official language, as in New Zealand, where alongside English, Maori and New Zealand Sign Language are also designated official languages. The terms to describe language use whether official, indigenous or minority language, are contentious and grounded in political, economic and social prestige. Grenoble and Singerman (2014: online) make the point that the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ‘defines minority languages based on two criteria: a numerically smaller speaker population and a lack of official status’.

All the countries mentioned above are linguistically and culturally diverse and pay attention to this diversity in varying degrees. In New Zealand, for example, the New

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Zealand Curriculum and the Te Marautanga o Aotearoa exist as parallel documents for schools who deliver the curriculum in either English or Maori. The statement of official policy notes:

Together, the two documents will help schools give effect to the partnership that is at the core of our nation’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi (TKI, 2017).

In Australia, whilst the indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are taught within the Languages section of the Australian Curriculum (2017), the language of instruction is Standard Australian English:

Australia is a linguistically and culturally diverse country, with participation in many aspects of Australian life dependent on effective communication in Standard Australian English. In addition, proficiency in English is invaluable globally. The Australian Curriculum: English contributes to nation-building and to internationalisation.

These two examples demonstrate differing attitudes to mother tongue education. They raise questions about whose language is being privileged and for what purpose, and these questions play out through school curricula and the attitudes to language espoused there. Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant (2014:2) make the point that:

Essentially there remains an immense tension between an imperialistic and nationalistic notion of English as a dominant language (i.e. all immigrants must learn to speak and ‘love’ English) and a far more inclusive notion which critiques this domineering position and asks students to do the same.

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In America, which has no official language and no national curriculum, the issue of bilingual education has had a chequered history. Individual states make their own decisions on policy and in 1997, California, followed by Massachusetts and Arizona, enacted sweeping legislation to shut down bilingual education (Goldenberg and Wagner, 2015). California finally overturned this ruling in 2016 (Sanchez, 2016) paving the way for bilingual education and recognising the growing parental interest in bilingualism, across many states. Sanchez (2016: online) notes that California has 1.4 million English Language Learners (ELLs), approximately one fifth of the enrolled student population, but the push for bilingual education is also being driven by parents for whom English is the first language. As Goldenberg and Wagner (2015: online) note:

Interest in bilingual programs crosses lines of language background, neighborhood, and income as parents across the United States realize the social and economic value of bilingualism.

The interesting question to ask here is what bilingualism means to the different groups identified above? It is one thing to desire bilingual education as a human right to enable economic and social participation in a society whose official language is not your mother tongue. It is something else to desire bilingual education because it might enhance a position already privileged by mother tongue access to the official language. These are different needs and raise questions about identity and school systems of teaching and learning and assessment. They also raise issues about the training and recruitment of bilingual teachers and the training and support of all teachers working in multilingual classrooms (UNESCO, 2013/14; Sanchez, 2016). There are also wider and more complex issues raised by Goldenberg and Wagner (2015) about the social and cultural status conferred on minority languages and reinforced by the state, through the choice of non-official foreign language study in the curriculum.

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This point is supported by Benavot’s (2008:31) study exploring the global perspective on the construction of official curricula. He notes that:

‘Official’ recognition of some languages and not others by the state, and the requirement that certain languages be included in public school criteria, clearly illustrates the impact of political considerations and cultural factors on language policies.

Benavot (2008: 32) goes on to note the global rise in ‘non-official’ foreign language learning, whilst also recognising that the designation of a country’s official language has a significant impact on the construction of curricula and the ideology that supports it. Bogue (1997:107) draws on the power relations inherent in Deleuze’s view of language and notes:

The object of language is not communication but the inculcation of ‘mots d’ordre’ – ‘slogans’, ‘watchwords’ but also literally, ‘words of order’, the dominant, orthodox ways of classifying, organizing and explaining the world … the various mots d’ordre of a culture being enforced through regular patterns of practice, ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’ or ‘regimes of signs’.

The role of the dominant language in establishing national identity is identified by Benavot (2008:31). He notes that a country’s ‘official’ language is given core status in the first eight grades of formal schooling and predominates all other language education. He makes the point that the lack of ‘(non-official) local or regional vernaculars in the language component of the school curriculum illustrates the limited political power of language minorities’.

This observation begins to explore the tension encapsulated in Deleuze’s ‘mots d’ordre’, to provide another perspective through which to view the question posed at the start of this section. Benavot (2008:32) continues:

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Language education obviously plays a critical role in the transmission of national cultures, and thus it is not surprising that instruction in ‘official’ – typically national – languages is emphasized in primary schools.

The tensions existing between the desire for a national identity established through common language usage, balanced against the importance of recognising linguistic and cultural identity, are further heightened by the economic prestige of a standardised English as an international language. The omnipresent role of the internet in global communications means that English, in its standardised forms, e.g. Australian English, American English, British English, and so on, has become the lingua franca of commerce and communication. While the rise of different ‘standardised’ forms of English appears to suggest a paradox, it represents the global cultural and economic changes of the last century. There are two points to be considered here, which I will look at from a European perspective. The first is that whilst there are 24 designated official languages in the 28 countries of the European Union, English as a foreign language is taught in 94.1% of these countries at secondary level (Eurostat, 2016). The prominence of English language teaching lies with the fact it is regarded as a lingua franca. However, this begs the question of whose English and whose culture is being taught (Decke-Cornhill, 2010)? Crystal (1999 cited in Decke-Cornhill, 2010:261) makes the point succinctly:

Teachers need to prepare their students for a world of staggering linguistic diversity. Somehow, they need to expose them to as many varieties of English as possible, especially those which they are most likely to encounter in their own locale. And above all teachers need to develop a truly flexible attitude towards principles of usage.

The current emphasis in England, on a narrowly conceived Standard English in the current national curriculum for English, to the exclusion of linguistic investigation that had been a feature of earlier documents, flies in the face of such

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recommendations and fails to acknowledge the variants of English on the global stage.

A further point emerges when considering Europe. Looking to the future and bearing in mind that global language usage clearly does not stand still, the UK’s decision in 2016, to leave the European Union may signal a shift in the automatic assumption that English remains a language of governance across European boundaries. A speech in French by the European Commission President, Jean- Claude Juncker, at an EU Conference in Italy, sparked much debate in the UK media as he commented that: ‘Slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe’ (Rankin, 2017:online). It will be interesting to observe how the political, cultural and economic negotiations surrounding ‘Brexit’, play out in terms of language use and how far assumptions about the dominance of English on a global stage might be challenged.

The issues of contention emerging through the place of language in the curriculum, play out globally with regard to the authors and texts that might be deemed worthy of study in schools. Knights (2016:6) makes the point that:

Educational subjects themselves are not inevitable, nor do they simply reflect an objective, uncontentious parcelling up of knowledge … Historically they emerge from, and are shaped and sustained within fields of social and political, as well as intellectual forces.

Literary study in national or state curricula, reflects a complex interplay of cultural and political ideology which draws on historical, social and geographical understandings of national identity. This complexity goes beyond the prescription of set texts. The question is not so much about which texts have been included, as which have been excluded and why: whose voices are heard and whose are not and how are these decisions made? A comparison of the Literature guidance in the curricula of New Zealand, Australia and England reveal significant differences in

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terms of detail and prescription but also in the notions of heritage and a sense of one’s place in the world. The New Zealand Curriculum guidance for Literature states that:

The study of New Zealand and world literature contributes to students’ developing sense of identity, their awareness of New Zealand’s bicultural heritage, and their understanding of the world (TKI, 2017).

The Australian Curriculum guidance for Literature states that:

The range of literary texts for study from Foundation to Year 10 comprises classic and contemporary world literature. It emphasises Australian literature, including the oral narrative traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, as well as the contemporary literature of these two cultural groups. It also includes texts from and about Asia (AC, 2017).

The English national curriculum states that at Key Stage 3 pupils should be taught to:

Develop an appreciation and love of reading, and read increasingly challenging material independently through:

 reading a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including in particular whole books, short stories, poems and plays with a wide coverage of genres, historical periods, forms and

authors, including high-quality works from English literature, both pre-1914 and contemporary, including prose, poetry and drama; Shakespeare (2 plays) and seminal world literature At key Stage 4 pupils should be taught to:

Read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through:

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 readinga wide range of high-quality, challenging, classic literature and extended literary non-fiction, such as essays, reviews and journalism. This writing should include whole texts. The range will include:

 at least one play by Shakespeare

 works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries

 poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry (DfE, 2017).

A comparison of this guidance raises two striking features. The first is a notion of heritage in the English curriculum that is inward-looking as opposed to the outward-looking, global interpretations of literature encapsulated in the New Zealand and Australian curricula. The second feature is that the heritage specified in the English curriculum appears fixed and mono-cultural. There is a sense of an envisioned identity being imposed rather than the idea of identity as fluid and organic, and growing out of and continuing to develop into shared cultural histories. McLean Davies (2014:241) makes the point that:

While the national curriculum of England makes relatively few references to the world, or global concerns, the latest version of the Australian curriculum makes consistent connections between the study of literature (both national and international) and students’ ability, in a Frieran sense, to ‘read the world’.

It is also striking that both the New Zealand and Australian curricula explicitly encompass a wide-ranging view of textual literacy that includes film, visual image, digital texts and multi-modality. This is an ongoing global debate into where the study of the media might fit within a curriculum structure, and the importance attached to digital literacy (Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant, 2014:5-6). However, such debate is missing from the English national curriculum. Richmond (2015:17) notes:

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A particular blind spot in the new orders, across the piece, is the almost total absence of any recognition that in the second decade of the 21st century the children and young people in our schools are surrounded by electronic and digital media.

A similar concern is echoed by Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant (2015:6) with regard to the lack of attention to Media and Digital Literacy in the Common Core State Standards in America. They note that:

Teachers and teacher-educators will need to find ways to teach beyond the standards if students are truly to be prepared for their futures.

Whilst curriculum specifications might envision the power of language and literature to determine a national sense of identity, there are other factors at play in determining what shapes the subject English. America and Canada, have no national curriculum and responsibility for education lies with state governments. Teale and Thompson (2014: online) note that with the introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010, America has moved closer to what might be described as a national curriculum and this has had an impact on the breadth of literature taught:

What has been more consistent for the past 15-20 years across the country is that the teaching of literature has been based on educational standards established by each state. These standards detail what students are expected to know and are able to do in each particular high school content area, at each grade level … As a result of the widespread adoption of the CCSS standards, we anticipate that research will show increasing conformity in the materials used in high school literature instruction in the US.

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This contraction in the face of standardised models of what pupils should know and be able to do, is supported by Benavot (2008:8) in his global study into the organisation of school knowledge:

Overall these studies underscore the growing global isomorphism of national curricular policies and structures … These findings illustrate the preponderance of the state as the site at which school curricula are constructed and sanctioned, but also the spreading influence of international organisations and transnational professionals in diffusing legitimate prescriptions of educational knowledge and rationalized curriculum models.

Perhaps a consequence of globalization is a growing sense of uniformity in terms of what constitutes knowledge and how that knowledge should be organised. As Teale and Thompson (2014) recognise, when standardised outcomes are added to this view of what constitutes worthwhile learning, then core subjects such as English might begin to narrow and conform to meet attainment targets.

Such attainment becomes more pressing when the outcomes are publicised on the world stage. A highly contested area of the English curriculum is the teaching of early reading (Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant, 2014). In this global era, attainment in reading is measured against international benchmarks such as the triennial tests run by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), co-ordinated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and also the five yearly Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Such international tests have become a measure by which standards in schools may be judged. Concerns borne out of such international comparisons continue to shape reading interventions which in turn shape curricula. Whilst recognising the imperative to raise reading attainment, Alexander (2012:5) warns against wholesale borrowing from other education jurisdictions to do this:

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Despite all we know about the pitfalls of cause/effect attribution in the educational and economic spheres, successive governments have found it hard to resist the naïve belief that raising test scores in literacy and numeracy will elevate a country’s economic performance, and that copying successful nations’ educational policies will both raise standards and pull us out of recession.

Alexander goes on to articulate the concern that, in the effort to ensure all pupils achieve, and gain competency, education policy makers might overlook the fact that curricula in different countries are embedded in the culture of that country. However, he does draw on an earlier comparative study (Alexander, 2001) to consider what might be learnt from the pedagogy of France, India, Russia and the United States. His conclusions focus on the centrality of dialogic, classroom talk to learning and he argues that:

… because spoken language is so central to both human learning and collective culture and identity, and precisely because the differences I had observed were so striking, classroom talk surely offers a rich potential for policy learning (Alexander 2012:15).

It is striking once again to note, that the latest iteration of the national curriculum in England is moving in a contrary direction to such research. Where Speaking and Listening had once taken an equal place alongside Reading and Writing, it is now embedded across the two programmes and a speaking and listening component no longer contributes to the English GCSE grade.

What does all this say about English teaching in England? The subject itself is hard to define and Knights (2015:7) notes that it has ‘permeable boundaries’. He goes on to point out that:

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There is a very low level of agreement about what counts as knowledge in the subject, or in what order its concepts and terms should be introduced to learners (or for that matter what those concepts and terms really are). This is of course what makes it such a rich and fascinating subject – and one endlessly open to influences not only from new creations in literature, media and