Hello world!

Welcome to Discipline of English, a repository for the accumulated knowledge of teaching English Language, English Literature and Media Studies. I have taught at GCSE to OCR, AQA, Pearson, Eduqas, as well as at A Level and even the new T Level. It all started in 2007, and I have worked with students in Wales, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and even Seattle. I’ve worked in selective grammar settings, mixed comps, inner city schools and rural schools. In all of this experience, I have come to conclude there are two significant changes needed to education.

The first observation is that English education is woefully locked into a ‘Powerpoint’ teaching and learning style. Powerpoint is an excellent tool, but teachers and students alike have been painfully aware of the ‘death-by-powerpoint’ teaching experience. Powerpoint has seemingly become a victim of its own success. What makes it excellent at the big ideas and big visuals, has been equivocated as excellent micro ideas and mini visuals. What I mean is, that digital presentations are great for ‘selling’, but not for ‘instruction’. They are great for a big idea in a big environment, but not the minutia to small environments. And teachers turned powerpoint into presentations with dozens of slides micromanaging the lesson.

The second observation is that the teaching and learning materials that are being made only work when the practitioner is a teacher. A teacher needs to be in the room to teach. When no teacher is supporting the teaching material, no learning can happen. It places the teacher in a prescriptive role of ‘learned scholar to be listened to’. But a practitioner can also be a facilitator, one who helps students to access material, to navigate it, and to get the best of it. The resources of the teacher cannot be used by the learner at home. The resources of the practitioner can be used by the student at home.

During the covid lockdowns, practitioners were forced to really evaluate what they are; teachers to deliver content, or facilitators to help student navigate content. Lock down pushed practitioners and students into the ‘facilitative’ model, but not all learning institutions were able to make this move. Instead, students found that online learning tools and ‘tiktoks’ were much more accessible. I don’t think that its solely because the media form is more relatable, but that it is designed with facilitative learning in mind.

In today’s post lockdown, post covid society, adults can often work hybrid models from home to the chagrin of students who must attend the classroom. The adult world continues to recognise that work can facilitate workers. But the world of education has dropped the ball, and we have not kept up with the changing world. Practitioners continue to lock-in to teaching via powerpoint which is now ‘so 2010’.

This website is designed to provide a facilitative experience that benefits all practitioners: whether teacher or facilitator; students whether in the classroom or in the home; and mentors whether subject specialists or not. By building the learning through a website, it is eminently more accessible to digital, mobile learners. It is more permanent than Powerpoint, which is a cheap and disposable tool. And a website is just as presentable.

There is no reason why a practitioner couldn’t display the work to students and support them through the learning, and encourage students to access the next lessons, or to go backwards, or to navigate in a flexible manner to suit their own natural inquisitive nature. The website can be shared to students absent from class. It can be linked for homework.

Will I stop using Powerpoints? I don’t think so. But the learning needs to be accessible, and websites are built for that very purpose. Let’s see how it works out.