What is English for? Language structure and the curriculum for English

This article uses Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse to account for both the processes by which curriculum change occurs and the failure of efforts to introduce meaningful attention to language structure into national curricula.

The National Literacy Strategy and knowledge about language in the English school curriculum

In “The English Patient: English Grammar and teaching in the Twentieth Century”, Hudson and Walmsley (2005) contend that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar decline in English universities, where no serious research or teaching on English grammar took place. This article argues that such a decline was due not only to a lack of research, but also because it suited educational policies of the time. It applies Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse (1990 & 1996) to the case study of the debate surrounding the introduction of a national curriculum in English in England in the late 1980s and the National Literacy Strategy in the 1990s, to demonstrate the links between academic theory and educational policy.

Grammar in the curriculum for English: what next?

It is clear from several government reports and research papers published recently, that the curriculum for English in primary and secondary schools is about to change, yet again. After years of a bureaucratic stranglehold that has left even Ofsted report writers criticising the teaching of English, it seems as if the conditions are right for further revisions. One of the questions that inevitably arises when a curriculum for English is reviewed, relates to the place and purpose of the teaching of grammar. This paper outlines a possible curriculum for grammar across both primary and secondary phases, arguing that for the teaching of grammar to have any salience or purpose at all, it has to be integrated into the curriculum as a whole, and not just that of writing. A recontextualised curriculum for grammar of the kind proposed here, would teach pupils to become critically literate in ways which recognise diversity as well as unity, and with the aim of providing them with the means to critically analyse and appraise the culture in which they live.

Forging futures? Engineering in the primary school curriculum

Starting with the research question, "How can the Primary School Curriculum be developed so as to spark Children's Engineering Imaginations from an early age?" this paper sets out to critically analyse the issues around embedding Engineering in the Primary School Curriculum from the age of 5 years. Findings from an exploratory research project suggest that in order to promote the concept of Engineering Education to potential university students (and in doing so begin to address issues around recruitment / retention within Engineering) there is a real need to excite and engage children with the subject from a young age. Indeed, it may be argued that within today's digital society, the need to encourage children to engage with Engineering is vital to the future sustainable development of our society. Whilst UK Government policy documents highlight the value of embedding Engineering into the school curriculum there is little or no evidence to suggest that Engineering has been successfully embedded into the elementary level school curriculum. Building on the emergent findings of the first stage of a longitudinal study, this paper concludes by arguing that Engineering could be embedded into the curriculum through innovative pedagogical approaches which contextualise project-based learning experiences within more traditional subjects including science, history, geography, literacy and numeracy.

Curriculum vita of Prof. Vasil Atanasov Popov

Our primary goal in this preamble is to highlight the best of Vasil Popov’s mathematical achievements and ideas. V. Popov showed his extraordinary talent for mathematics in his early papers in the (typically Bulgarian) area of approximation in the Hausdorff metric. His results in this area are very well presented in the monograph of his advisor Bl. Sendov, “Hausdorff Approximation”.