…The title of the second
publication, Confronting Practice:
Classroom investigations into
Language and Learning,
unequivocally challenges the reader
to adopt a critical and inquiring
standpoint on English teaching.
Here, the notion of 'effectiveness' is
criticised for what the authors
perceive as its more managerial than
professional intent. Drawing instead
on theories such as those of Douglas
Barnes, James Britton and Harold
Rosen, as well as Walter Benjamin
and Paulo Freire, Brenton Doecke
and Douglas McClennaghan argue
that English teaching is a vast and
complex domain, one which cannot
be reduced to generalisation. They
prefer what they term
'conversational inquiry'. The book
consists of a set of narratives written
by Douglas McClenaghan about
various aspects of his classroom
practice, interspersed with
sequences of more analytical
writing by both authors that aim to
'grapple with issues of curriculum
and pedagogy at the current
moment' (p.5), and an essay by
Doecke at the end (entitled
'Beginning Again'). The reader thus
weaves between stories from
McClennaghans's classroom, vibrant
examples of students'
achievements and the authors'
64
reflections on the contexts within
which they were produced.
A strong thread throughout the
book is that students' own lives,
needs and interests should be the
starting point for the texts they
create in English. In McClenaghan's
classroom, students are encouraged
to make choices about the media
they use for their work, often
creating multimodal texts as a result.
Examples are analysed to show 'how
the social networks and associated
semiotic practices in which
adolescents engage outside school
intersect with their lives in school' (p.
20). Despite the strong emphasis on
students' individual lives beyond the
classroom, school is still seen as
critical: the classroom is a place
where collaboration and dialogue
are fostered so that what is
produced is shaped in part by the
way students process it with their
peers and with the teacher. Through
the narratives, readers attend to the
particularity of the students'
learning and production but are then
confronted in the intervening
analyses with broader issues such as
the vicissitudes of national
standards-based reforms or recent
pedagogical initiatives of which the
authors are critical.
This text, like the previous one,
demands to be discussed not simply
read. I found myself constantly being
provoked into different ways of
thinking about classroom practice
by its material and arguments, but
also wanting to ask questions. For
example, whilst emphasis is placed
on valuing different forms of popular
culture in the classroom, I sensed a
slight negativity towards more
conventional genres and canonical
texts. Schools are places where
students are entitled to encounter
diversity. A work overtly written
from 'within a tradition of inquiry
that emphasizes the way knowledge
is always constructed from a certain
standpoint' (p. 5), might therefore
recommend students engage with
all kinds of texts so that they, too,
learn to adopt standpoints. The
American
scholar, Robert Scholes, who - like
Doecke and McClennaghan - takes
very seriously the importance of
popular cultural texts, nevertheless
presents a broader view in The Rise
and Fall of English (Yale, 1998),
arguing for the vital importance of
'the ability to respond, to talk back, to
analyze, to extend, to take one's own
textual position in relation to
Shakespeare - or any kind of text.
Shakespeare wants audiences whose
love of language and ability to
respond to it matches his own
textual power' (p. 131). Reading
Confronting practice: Classroom
investigations into language and
learning left me in little doubt that
textual power is what Doecke and
McClennaghan are also arguing for,
rightly privileging popular cultural
texts which may otherwise be
neglected. The strength of their
ideas offers a valuable starting point
for debating how, though, these
might be studied in addition to,
rather than instead of, other kinds of
text. The authors argue specifically
for 'taking a standpoint' which, for
them, bespeaks forms of action not
merely reflection. They are
refreshingly candid about the
various strong standpoints they
themselves take and, in being so,
prompt readers not only to examine
their own positions but to speak
back. Reading this text, therefore,
should only be a beginning not an
end in itself.
Different sections of both texts
would, I think, make for fascinating
discussion amongst new and
experienced teachers as part of preor in-service courses where their
provocations could be debated and
provide a range of different
stepping-off points for future work
in English classrooms.
Gabrielle Cliff-Hodges
University of Cambridge