Durham E-Theses Radical Romantic Pedagogy: an exploration of the tradition and viability of a synthesis of Romantic and radical visions of education, focusing on the teaching of English at secondary level in England. STEVENS, DAVID How to cite: STEVENS, DAVID (2010) Radical Romantic Pedagogy: an exploration of the tradition and viability of a synthesis of Romantic and radical visions of education, focusing on the teaching of English at secondary level in England. , Durham theses, Durham University. 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A thesis submitted to Durham University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by David Stevens. Durham University School of Education 2010. DECLARATION. This thesis is the result of my own research and has not been submitted for any other degree at any university. 1 Thesis Abstract. In this thesis I explore aspects of the tradition of radical Romanticism in a pedagogical context, with the focus on the teaching of English in secondary (11-18 age range) schools in England. I draw on my personal professional history as English school-teacher and teacher educator in this project, alongside more theoretical considerations, aiming towards a creative synthesis between Romantic and critical paradigms. In so doing I look first at the general contexts of such relationships, introducing some of the principal figures in the debate, in Section One. I go on to look more closely, in Section Two, at the nature of experience in education through the lens of slippery but crucial ideas of immersion, criticality and wonder, culminating in some illustrative descriptions of English classroom activity. For Section Three this leads into an exploration of the nature of creativity in education – a concept much used currently, but in need of more careful, critically purposeful and painstaking theorising. Following this discussion, I look in Section Four at aspects of the Secondary English curriculum in more detail, both theoretically and practically, before making a specific study in Section Five of interdisciplinary possibilities – a key area, by definition suggesting the forging of connections in theory and practice and thus tending to bring to the fore both unifying possibilities and challenging disjunctions. In the sense that my project here is to do with developing pedagogy, I explore next, in Section Six, some of the issues in the context of initial teacher education (ITE), currently my own sphere of professional activity. Section Seven represents something of a poetic interlude, if (I hope) an illuminating one. Section Eight is essentially an attempt to tie together the various strands of my study and look towards future possibilities, including the tentative conclusions presented in Section Nine. 2 Contents. Introduction. 7 Section One: Contexts. 9 1.1 Autobiographical roots. 9 1.2 Romanticism: theory, research and practice. 11 1.3 Romanticism and Critical Pedagogy. 13 1.4 A sense of awe and wonder. 14 1.5 Guiding spirits. 17 1.6 The nature of Romanticism. 20 1.7 Further characteristics of Romanticism. 23 Section Two: Immersion, Criticality and Wonder. 26 2.1 The pedagogical tradition of Romanticism in English. 26 2.2 The current English curriculum. 27 2.3 Back to the future: seventeenth century radicalism and beyond. 30 2.4 From a distance: wonder and criticality. 32 2.5 Questions of culture. 35 2.6 William Blake. 36 2.7 English pedagogy revisited: textual diversity. 38 2.8 The place of literature teaching. 39 2.9 The lesson: structure and direction. 42 2.10 Aspects of writing in the English classroom. 45 2.11 Further illustrations from practice. 49 Section Three: Notions of Creativity. 56 3.1 Creativity in English. 56 3.2 The nature of creativity. 58 3.3 Creativity in the Secondary classroom. 59 3.4 Values and creativity. 61 3.5 Innocence, experience and creativity. 63 3.6 Teaching William Blake. 70 3.7 Further illustrative examples from the English classroom. 75 3 Section Four: Aspects of the Secondary English Curriculum. 79 4.1. Critical Distance and Engaged Immersion Revisited: Language Awareness in the English Curriculum. 79 4.1.1 The broad context of language awareness. 79 4.1.2 Varieties of English. 81 4.1.3 Language study in the English curriculum. 82 4.2. Speaking and Listening. 86 4.2.1. The background. 86 4.2.2 Some defining voices. 88 4.2.3 Tensions in speaking and listening. 89 4.2.4 Elements of good practice: towards resolution. 91 4.3. Reading. 95 4.3.1 The nature of reading in the English curriculum. 95 4.3.2 Breadth in the reading curriculum. 98 4.3.3 Practical implications and critical approaches. 99 4.3.4 Further practical implications. 103 4.4 Writing. 105 4.4.1 The development of writing in education. 105 4.4.2 Categories of writing. 107 4.4.3 Inspirations for writing. 108 4.4.4 Forms of writing. 110 4.4.5 Practical considerations in the teaching of writing. 112 Section Five: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. 114 5.1 The context for interdisciplinary developments. 114 5.2 ICT in the interdisciplinary venture: tensions and possibilities. 116 5.3 ICT in the interdisciplinary venture: illustrative activities. 118 5.4 Humanitarian perspectives. 119 5.5 English and the arts revisited. 120 5.6 English and music. 122 5.7 Music journalism. 128 5.8 English and pictorial art. 129 5.9 English and modern foreign languages. 130 5.10 English and mathematics. 131 5.11 English and science. 134 5.12 The prospects for interdisciplinary pedagogy. 136 4 Section Six: Issues around Teacher Education. 143 6.1 The context for initial teacher education. 143 6.2 The Standards: possible meanings. 144 6.3 Issues around subject and pedagogical knowledge and understanding. 146 6.4 Transformations and reflexivity. 147 6.5 Critical Pedagogy and ITE. 149 6.6 The ITE context revisited. 152 Section Seven: Poetic Illustrations for Practice. 153 7.1 Introductory. 153 7.2 Teaching Martian Poetry. 154 7.3 Further Martian possibilities. 160 7.4 Collaborative teaching of The Lambton Worm. 162 Section Eight: Romantic Culture and the Intercultural Imperative. 165 8.1 the importance of synthesis. 165 8.2 The culture of school life. 166 8.3 Critiques of Romantic education. 167 8.4 The open classroom. 170 8.5 Notions of art and culture. 171 8.6 The intercultural turn. 173 8.7 A sense of place. 174 8.8 Subversive elements. 176 8.9 The challenge. 178 Section Nine: Towards a Synthesis. 181 Appendices. 183 Appendix 1: Some practical suggestions for promoting language awareness in the English classroom. 183 Appendix 2: Practical suggestions for promotion of speaking and listening in the English classroom. 186 Appendix 3: Activities focused on writing in the English classroom. 188 5 Appendix 4: Teaching the ballad Little Musgrave. 191 Appendix 5: Summaries of research projects informing the thesis. 192 5a: Transformations in learning and teaching through ITE 192 5b: Observer, observed and observations: ITE tutors‟ feedback on lessons taught by student teachers of English. 194 References. 197 6 Introduction. Through this primarily theoretical research I intend to discover, explore and work towards developing aspects of the tradition of radical Romanticism in a pedagogical context, with the focus on the teaching of English in secondary (11-18 age range) schools in England. In part, this particular focus stems from my personal professional history: I taught English in four comprehensive secondary schools in England between 1979 and 1996 – a period incidentally of enormous upheaval and conflict in schools and beyond – and since 1996 I have been responsible for the preparation of student teachers of English for their chosen profession through the Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course at Durham University. In another sense, though, my choice of the subject English as the lens through which to view my research is guided by more theoretical considerations: having its roots in what one of the current exponents of this tradition, Peter Abbs, has called ‗the tougher side of Romanticism‘ (1976: 5), it seems to me that the subject English lends itself particularly well to the kind of exploration I have in mind, especially perhaps in the telling interface between subject discipline and definition, the theoretical standpoints of its practitioners, and the pedagogical positioning of its teachers. In all three of these aspects and in their inter-relationship, clearly, there are tensions (occasionally stretched to breaking point), contentions and controversies, but also potential harmonies. In conducting the exploratory research, however, both through my reading and through considerations of practice in English classrooms and teacher education, I have become increasingly aware of an interdisciplinary context for English teaching, and, through this enhanced awareness, drawn to a model of an ‗interdisciplinary English teacher‘ as essentially a new kind of English teacher, equipped for the needs of the twenty-first century in combining and synthesising the most appropriate elements of both Romantic and radically critical traditions.