This article considers teacher agency in teachers of English in Ontario (Canada) and England, based on interviews with and lesson observations of teachers in three high schools in Ontario and four in England. Our research looks at the way policy impacts on their practice. We found a greater sense of agency amongst teachers in Ontario that may have…

The teaching of writing is at the core of the secondary English teacher's work. There have long been contrasting ideas about the most effective approaches to supporting students as writers, and in recent years in England the evidence--from Ofsted, for example--would suggest that it is common for teachers to offer structures to scaffold students'…

English as a subject used to be assessed using course-based or portfolio assessments but now it is increasingly examined through terminal tests. Canada is an exception to this rule. This paper compares the way English is assessed in England and Canada and looks to the ways in which the kind of assessment undertaken affects the practices of English…

It can be argued that nearly thirty years of heavily centralised intervention into English pedagogy, curriculum and assessment have had a deprofessionalising effect on teachers. The accountability stranglehold means it is safer for English teachers to implement accepted strategies that are perceived to enable pupils to negotiate assessment…

This is the fascinating story of the birth, growth, and development of the London Association for the Teaching of English from its earliest years through to the formation of the National Association for the Teaching of English and thereafter. The work of founder members of LATE, such as James Britton, Harold Rosen, and Nancy Martin, was critical…

Recent policy developments in England have, to some extent, relaxed the hold of external, high-stakes assessment on teachers of students in the early years of secondary education. In such a context, there is the opportunity for teachers to reassert the importance of teacher assessment as the most reliable means of judging a student's abilities. A…

In England, little research has been carried out into how pre-service secondary English teachers transform what they know as they learn to teach. They are seldom asked to reflect explicitly on the connections between the pedagogy of their undergraduate studies and their pedagogical experiences as student teachers. The initial teacher education…