Author: Aaron Swan
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Few departments have a proper curriculum of knowledge (in English at least) – as a formal, single document. But when this is in place, it can be reformatted in different ways…
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A recent Facebook post asked the question, does the meaning of a book belong to the reader or the author. This is very much the kind of debate about Literature that students should be trained to engage with. The following is exactly the kind of objective that I think students of Literature should be regularly…
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English education in England is shaped by a persistent structural problem: the absence of an explicit disciplinary model. Ofsted’s Telling the Story report identifies the symptoms of this absence—fragile foundational knowledge, inconsistent subject expertise, fragmented literature sequencing, and assessment distortion—but it does not define the epistemic structure required to resolve them. The Discipline of English…
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We often talk about the function of Literature as one of nurturing students to know how to read. To build the skill of reading, we focus on sustained and focused reading time, reading aloud, retrieval and recall questions. The progress and attainment of reading is often measured through reading age or NRSS scores. But, these…
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I’m extremely pleased to announce that an article I have been working in for a few years has succeeded at academic review, has been approved by the editor and is now published by Taylor and Francis! Methodological facts associated with literature; a style guide for secondary‑level literature analysis in replacement of PEE-esk strategies: English in…
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I’m proud to announce that my first manuscript has been approved by peer review and accepted for publication! I’ll announce the publisher and link to the paper when it’s available, but for now today is momentous. The paper reflects 20 years of teaching and validates a large proportion of the curriculum I have been prototyping.…
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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We teach students to search poetry for meaning, as though every poem contains a hidden answer waiting to be uncovered. But what if that assumption is wrong? In War Photographer, Carol Ann Duffy presents us with a figure caught between professionalism and guilt, compassion and detachment, witness and participant. Yet the closer we examine the…
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What if every story is really the same story? A recent lesson began with a challenge to a common assumption in English teaching: that students learn Literature by studying individual texts. Instead, students were introduced to the idea of literary genealogy—the concept that all stories belong to the same enduring tradition and share a common…
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You might be a critic if… requires some love of reading for sure, but literary study is not book club to spend time in the warm glow of a narrative. A critic is ‘reading’, ‘experiencing’ and ‘reacting’ differently to a mere reader-for-pleasure.
