Conclusions
The subject of English in England has a very high profile but, in my opinion, a relatively slight research base. On a positive note, the NATE journal English in Education has resumed a peer review, research focused style. The annual NATE conference now consistently hosts research sessions and plans to increase this presence over time and its ‘sister’ association, UKLA, has many research presentations of interest to English educators. But at BERA [The British Educational Research Association] or AERA [The American Educational Research Association] there are no SIGs devoted to English per se. At BERA there is a language and literacy group within which people like myself tend to present but other papers, in the same session, often have only the most tangential relationship to my own. Also of note are the European Educational Research Association and The European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, both host a range of conferences with some attention to mother tongue teaching, EARLI is especially strong on specific areas such as writing,
The most recent ESRC funded project which addressed the subject ‘English in urban schools’, produced some really fascinating results and its multi-modal methodology offers real promise for some new ways to investigate the subject of English [Kress et al. 2005].
The EPPI English group [see the EPPI web site] have produced several thorough, rigorous and valuable reviews and their findings really ought to influence policy but one wonders if politicians will ever believe any evidence about grammar whoever provides it?
The current national concerns, especially in teacher education, are with ‘shortage areas’ such as Science and Maths and these are undeniably in a state of crisis. As a profession English still recruits well and, ironically, this weakens its position when funds are being distributed.
Overall, English in my view, is under-researched and the teacher education community very hard pressed to find time to develop research capacity. It is all the more welcome then to have this opportunity to review some of the key aspects of the subject that have been researched and to hope that this will stimulate some users of this site to generate their own research profiles in the future and to help their trainees see research as an essential element in helping them reflect on their practice.
Andy Goodwyn
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