Author: Aaron Swan
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Schools are increasingly recognising that emotional regulation is not merely a pastoral concern but a prerequisite for meaningful disciplinary engagement. In English, where students must navigate complex texts, abstract ideas, and interpretive uncertainty, emotional stability is foundational. This framework introduces the concept of Emotional Touchstones: personal, meaningful physical objects that provide students with cues of…
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The England–Mexico 1am kick‑off has triggered a national debate: late nights, attendance fines, cultural capital, and ministerial statements. But beneath the headlines lies a structural truth: our curriculum is so fragile that a single missed lesson can damage progress. That’s not a parenting problem — it’s a design problem.
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Perspectives in stories matter. Typically, the perspective that we follow is the ‘protagonist’ – and typically we align the protagonist with the function of the hero. Few stories subvert this but by deconstructing and rebuilding Macbeth, we might get a very different view of what role each character fulfills.
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As schools prepare for potential closures during extreme weather, English departments must reconsider their reliance on teacher‑led slide decks and instead adopt facilitative learning devices that enable genuine independence.
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Contemporary English classrooms often risk collapsing the discipline into the act of reading a set text. When the novel becomes the central experience rather than the material through which disciplinary thinking is developed, opportunities for explicit language instruction diminish. This article argues that English must be understood not as the passive consumption of literary works,…
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Much of the work in DisciplineOfEnglish.co.uk is centered around a critical perspective that requires more reading, more tracing, more historical contexts, more structural connections. Whether it be the factual defining characteristics, the historicity of sign systems, or the cultural theories which have all now been detailed extensively here – where ever you turn within this…
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Literacy skills precede the body of knowledge in Language and Literature – so what is the ‘structure’ to be learnt in Literacy, that aids comprehension, and taxonomically precedes structure in those other disciplines? Here’s how I do it.
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The function and purpose of assessing at KS3 is not always clearly outlined, because the questions that need answering are hard. But if they are answered, some of the barriers to good marking can be lifted. It’s a conceptual problem that is worth investing in.
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After years of following the core department curriculum of inferential reading, I’m moving towards the teaching of key vocabulary – a critical language that is far removed from ‘this implies / this suggests’.
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Teachers need to position themselves as the people writing manuals for complex machines, controlling the language that matches the user, not as people creating an environment conducive to discovery learning.
