Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Risks to Early Leaving/ NEEThood; This short video exp... more Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Risks to Early Leaving/ NEEThood; This short video explains a conceptual model for understanding the risks to early leaving for young people, or what in the UK is referred to as being not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET). It has been produced for the Tackling Early Leaving (TEL) training programme as part of the European-funded Orienta4YEL project, a three year study aiming to understand and intervene on Early Leaving across five nations in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Germany, Romania and the U
Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education,... more Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) stubbornly high and the COVID-19 Pandemic exacerbating school disengagement and widening inequalities. Drawing on rich qualitative data from a three-year study evaluating educational interventions tackling NEEThood, this paper explores such interventions were successful from the perspectives of the young people and their educators. We introduce five mechanisms underpinning effective support strategies, arguing that these enable a pathway to change for young people. We distinguish between foundational mechanisms, essential at the outset of work with young people, facilitating mechanisms which build on these foundations, and outcome-generating mechanisms which lead to education and work goals. These findings underscore the importance of tackling the social aspects of educational disengagement, as well as the critical role of advocacy and support from an adult who can unpick the complex barriers to engagement and learning.
International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 2022
Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education,... more Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) stubbornly high and the COVID-19 Pandemic exacerbating school disengagement and widening inequalities. Drawing on rich qualitative data from a three-year study evaluating educational interventions tackling NEEThood, this paper explores such interventions were successful from the perspectives of the young people and their educators. We introduce five mechanisms underpinning effective support strategies, arguing that these enable a pathway to change for young people. We distinguish between foundational mechanisms, essential at the outset of work with young people, facilitating mechanisms which build on these foundations, and outcome-generating mechanisms which lead to education and work goals. These findings underscore the importance of tackling the social aspects of educational disengagement, as well as the critical role of advocacy and support from an adult who can unpick the complex barriers to engagement and learning.
This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English ... more This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English literature education. It argues that English teachers need a revised, cohesive theory around criticality development that can both account for new practices with technology and mesh productively with existing disciplinary conventions. The chapter reports on attempts to meaningfully integrate iPad usage into the study of literary texts, exploring the experiences of two classes producing multimodal responses to literary texts. Drawing on Kress’ scholarship on multimodality and reader-response theories, it argues that multimodal response can increase motivation, engagement and originality by acknowledging students’ cultural agency and giving them access to a broader range of semiotic modes. It highlights ways in which task design encourages students to draw on traditional disciplinary skills. The chapter also explores how the engagement demanded by embodied approaches to learning can have a...
This article draws on experiences of teaching Stone Cold to respond to a blog post suggesting tha... more This article draws on experiences of teaching Stone Cold to respond to a blog post suggesting that the novel holds little educational value.I argue that the novel's narrative style helps to foster criticality while its subject matter can help students see the relevance of literature to the world around them. Relating this to broader debates about the reading curriculum, I explore the clash of ideological viewpoints about its purpose. I conclude that Young Adult fiction has an important role to play in maintaining a sense that culture is a contemporary phenomenon which is actively experienced, not simply a historical one which is passively explored.
This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English ... more This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English literature education. It argues that English teachers need a revised, cohesive theory around criticality development that can both account for new practices with technology and mesh productively with existing disciplinary conventions. The chapter reports on attempts to meaningfully integrate iPad usage into the study of literary texts, exploring the experiences of two classes producing multimodal responses to literary texts. Drawing on Kress’ scholarship on multimodality and reader-response theories, it argues that multimodal response can increase motivation, engagement and originality by acknowledging students’ cultural agency and giving them access to a broader range of semiotic modes. It highlights ways in which task design encourages students to draw on traditional disciplinary skills. The chapter also explores how the engagement demanded by embodied approaches to learning can have an impact on students’ sense of identity and belonging in both positive and difficult ways, underscoring the social and intersubjective dimensions of literacy development. By enabling closer attention to complexity of criticality development through literary study, the tripartite model may develop our understandings of under-recognised aspects of this process, offering teachers greater scope to imagine productive new ways of working with technology in English literature classrooms.
This study focuses on the development of students’ critical response to literature during
Second... more This study focuses on the development of students’ critical response to literature during Secondary English Literature lessons. It seeks to understand the pedagogical affordances of multimodal response using iPads, during the study of canonical literary texts. Though technology is changing the way we communicate and interact, the UK’s Secondary National Curriculum for English makes no mention of modern modes of communication and constructs a very traditional view of Literary study. While touch-screen tablets are readily available in many Secondary Schools, English Literature teachers do not have a coherent rationale for using them productively and research into their pedagogical affordances is only just emerging. This Action Research study was undertaken in collaboration with a Secondary English teacher and her Year 10 class over the course of two terms. Viewing visual and embodied modes of response as expressions of voice to be considered alongside the classroom talk, this analysis draws on rich and varied data generated during the teaching episodes, to analyse critical voice development. I demonstrate that collaborative multimodal response on iPads has important potential pedagogically, in terms of: • Encouraging students to work with allusive, symbolic and metaphorical meanings which are key aspects of literary language and critical voice development • Supporting intersubjectivity and dialogic engagement • Helping students to draw on and externalise tacit knowledge This has implications for the development of pedagogy in English Literature education in contemporary classrooms and offers insights into the use of multimodal response to develop more dialogic interaction in the Secondary Literature classroom
Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Risks to Early Leaving/ NEEThood; This short video exp... more Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Risks to Early Leaving/ NEEThood; This short video explains a conceptual model for understanding the risks to early leaving for young people, or what in the UK is referred to as being not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET). It has been produced for the Tackling Early Leaving (TEL) training programme as part of the European-funded Orienta4YEL project, a three year study aiming to understand and intervene on Early Leaving across five nations in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Germany, Romania and the U
Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education,... more Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) stubbornly high and the COVID-19 Pandemic exacerbating school disengagement and widening inequalities. Drawing on rich qualitative data from a three-year study evaluating educational interventions tackling NEEThood, this paper explores such interventions were successful from the perspectives of the young people and their educators. We introduce five mechanisms underpinning effective support strategies, arguing that these enable a pathway to change for young people. We distinguish between foundational mechanisms, essential at the outset of work with young people, facilitating mechanisms which build on these foundations, and outcome-generating mechanisms which lead to education and work goals. These findings underscore the importance of tackling the social aspects of educational disengagement, as well as the critical role of advocacy and support from an adult who can unpick the complex barriers to engagement and learning.
International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 2022
Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education,... more Tackling NEEThood remains a major UK policy focus, with numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) stubbornly high and the COVID-19 Pandemic exacerbating school disengagement and widening inequalities. Drawing on rich qualitative data from a three-year study evaluating educational interventions tackling NEEThood, this paper explores such interventions were successful from the perspectives of the young people and their educators. We introduce five mechanisms underpinning effective support strategies, arguing that these enable a pathway to change for young people. We distinguish between foundational mechanisms, essential at the outset of work with young people, facilitating mechanisms which build on these foundations, and outcome-generating mechanisms which lead to education and work goals. These findings underscore the importance of tackling the social aspects of educational disengagement, as well as the critical role of advocacy and support from an adult who can unpick the complex barriers to engagement and learning.
This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English ... more This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English literature education. It argues that English teachers need a revised, cohesive theory around criticality development that can both account for new practices with technology and mesh productively with existing disciplinary conventions. The chapter reports on attempts to meaningfully integrate iPad usage into the study of literary texts, exploring the experiences of two classes producing multimodal responses to literary texts. Drawing on Kress’ scholarship on multimodality and reader-response theories, it argues that multimodal response can increase motivation, engagement and originality by acknowledging students’ cultural agency and giving them access to a broader range of semiotic modes. It highlights ways in which task design encourages students to draw on traditional disciplinary skills. The chapter also explores how the engagement demanded by embodied approaches to learning can have a...
This article draws on experiences of teaching Stone Cold to respond to a blog post suggesting tha... more This article draws on experiences of teaching Stone Cold to respond to a blog post suggesting that the novel holds little educational value.I argue that the novel's narrative style helps to foster criticality while its subject matter can help students see the relevance of literature to the world around them. Relating this to broader debates about the reading curriculum, I explore the clash of ideological viewpoints about its purpose. I conclude that Young Adult fiction has an important role to play in maintaining a sense that culture is a contemporary phenomenon which is actively experienced, not simply a historical one which is passively explored.
This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English ... more This chapter proposes a new tripartite model of critical voice development for secondary English literature education. It argues that English teachers need a revised, cohesive theory around criticality development that can both account for new practices with technology and mesh productively with existing disciplinary conventions. The chapter reports on attempts to meaningfully integrate iPad usage into the study of literary texts, exploring the experiences of two classes producing multimodal responses to literary texts. Drawing on Kress’ scholarship on multimodality and reader-response theories, it argues that multimodal response can increase motivation, engagement and originality by acknowledging students’ cultural agency and giving them access to a broader range of semiotic modes. It highlights ways in which task design encourages students to draw on traditional disciplinary skills. The chapter also explores how the engagement demanded by embodied approaches to learning can have an impact on students’ sense of identity and belonging in both positive and difficult ways, underscoring the social and intersubjective dimensions of literacy development. By enabling closer attention to complexity of criticality development through literary study, the tripartite model may develop our understandings of under-recognised aspects of this process, offering teachers greater scope to imagine productive new ways of working with technology in English literature classrooms.
This study focuses on the development of students’ critical response to literature during
Second... more This study focuses on the development of students’ critical response to literature during Secondary English Literature lessons. It seeks to understand the pedagogical affordances of multimodal response using iPads, during the study of canonical literary texts. Though technology is changing the way we communicate and interact, the UK’s Secondary National Curriculum for English makes no mention of modern modes of communication and constructs a very traditional view of Literary study. While touch-screen tablets are readily available in many Secondary Schools, English Literature teachers do not have a coherent rationale for using them productively and research into their pedagogical affordances is only just emerging. This Action Research study was undertaken in collaboration with a Secondary English teacher and her Year 10 class over the course of two terms. Viewing visual and embodied modes of response as expressions of voice to be considered alongside the classroom talk, this analysis draws on rich and varied data generated during the teaching episodes, to analyse critical voice development. I demonstrate that collaborative multimodal response on iPads has important potential pedagogically, in terms of: • Encouraging students to work with allusive, symbolic and metaphorical meanings which are key aspects of literary language and critical voice development • Supporting intersubjectivity and dialogic engagement • Helping students to draw on and externalise tacit knowledge This has implications for the development of pedagogy in English Literature education in contemporary classrooms and offers insights into the use of multimodal response to develop more dialogic interaction in the Secondary Literature classroom
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Secondary English Literature lessons. It seeks to understand the pedagogical affordances of
multimodal response using iPads, during the study of canonical literary texts.
Though technology is changing the way we communicate and interact, the UK’s Secondary
National Curriculum for English makes no mention of modern modes of communication and
constructs a very traditional view of Literary study. While touch-screen tablets are readily
available in many Secondary Schools, English Literature teachers do not have a coherent
rationale for using them productively and research into their pedagogical affordances is only
just emerging.
This Action Research study was undertaken in collaboration with a Secondary English
teacher and her Year 10 class over the course of two terms. Viewing visual and embodied
modes of response as expressions of voice to be considered alongside the classroom talk,
this analysis draws on rich and varied data generated during the teaching episodes, to
analyse critical voice development.
I demonstrate that collaborative multimodal response on iPads has important potential
pedagogically, in terms of:
• Encouraging students to work with allusive, symbolic and metaphorical meanings
which are key aspects of literary language and critical voice development
• Supporting intersubjectivity and dialogic engagement
• Helping students to draw on and externalise tacit knowledge
This has implications for the development of pedagogy in English Literature education in
contemporary classrooms and offers insights into the use of multimodal response to
develop more dialogic interaction in the Secondary Literature classroom
Secondary English Literature lessons. It seeks to understand the pedagogical affordances of
multimodal response using iPads, during the study of canonical literary texts.
Though technology is changing the way we communicate and interact, the UK’s Secondary
National Curriculum for English makes no mention of modern modes of communication and
constructs a very traditional view of Literary study. While touch-screen tablets are readily
available in many Secondary Schools, English Literature teachers do not have a coherent
rationale for using them productively and research into their pedagogical affordances is only
just emerging.
This Action Research study was undertaken in collaboration with a Secondary English
teacher and her Year 10 class over the course of two terms. Viewing visual and embodied
modes of response as expressions of voice to be considered alongside the classroom talk,
this analysis draws on rich and varied data generated during the teaching episodes, to
analyse critical voice development.
I demonstrate that collaborative multimodal response on iPads has important potential
pedagogically, in terms of:
• Encouraging students to work with allusive, symbolic and metaphorical meanings
which are key aspects of literary language and critical voice development
• Supporting intersubjectivity and dialogic engagement
• Helping students to draw on and externalise tacit knowledge
This has implications for the development of pedagogy in English Literature education in
contemporary classrooms and offers insights into the use of multimodal response to
develop more dialogic interaction in the Secondary Literature classroom