One Giant Leap Forward and Several Hasty Retreats

Supervisor, cheer me, for I have read. It is one month since my last meeting.

Brown, J. .S, Collins, A & Duguid, P. 1989. Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher. [Online]. 18(1), 32-42. [30 November 2015]. Available from: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/18/1/32
Kalenze, E (2014). Education is Upside-Down Reframing reform to focus on the right problems. (1st ed.). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Merga, M.K. (2015). Access to Books in the Home and Adolescent Engagement in Recreational Book Reading: Considerations for secondary school educators. English in Education. 49(3), pp. 197-214.
Nationalcollegeorguk. 2015. Nationalcollegeorguk. [Online]. [24 November 2015]. Available from: https://network.nationalcollege.org.uk/collegediscussions/28075
Revisiting Margaret Meek

I was also lucky enough to attend Tom Bennett's Research Ed English conference at Swindon on the 7th November. I heard David Didau, Debra Kidd, Professor Ray Land of Durham University who gave the keynote address on threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. I took something from each. From Andy Tharby I am utilising an ideal: imagine if every English teacher read one paper every half term over a period of ten years...Eric Kalenze's discussion of context and his urge to 'put those comprehension strategies down' was compelling.  Each sent me scuttling in a different reading direction.

But of this month's new reading, Brown's Situated Cognition was the most interesting (and the most difficult to process!) I need to investigate much further, but this could be the start of a theoretical framework in which to root my research. I am definitely shaping around the building of a reading community, and the things that are within my power in the classroom and across the department. Influenced by Brown, I am questioning what it means to be a reader in the real world, and what that might look like translated into a classroom – so still maintaining those initial threads of ideas about teacher knowledge; systems, environment and opportunities; and knowledge of the students themselves as readers all contributing to some kind of departmental pedagogy about the teaching of reading.

From the eminently companionable Doctoral Student's Companion I have enjoyed a useful chapter on the Literature Review with really concrete examples of good and bad writing - so I have begun, and will have something by the January deadline. A timely and useful prod since I feel like I actually have to do something other than read and think in a bubble but it is, still, difficult to do without formulated research questions. I have too many of them and they are simply too big at the moment. Which is where Pryor's essay on constructing research questions has been invaluable. I have undertaken the suggested map of significance exercise to try and focus thinking.

It transpires that, currently, the profile and status of reading for pleasure institutionally, notions of ‘authentic’ reading and ‘authentic’ situations and opportunity for reading both in terms of access and curriculum are central. I suspect that, in spite of everything that might be going on to promote reading at the surface, teachers are still subconsciously but intrinsically and implicitly condemning it as an activity.  I think about the 'Currently I'm Reading...poster campaign at school and its now tired unsustainability; the half-hearted support amongst non-English staff for things like DEAR; the fact that reading in lessons is side-lined the minute exams or any kind of internal assessment are on the scene; even the language that we use to describe the most able readers, not to mention the lack of curriculum time currently allowed to pursuing reading for pleasure. All these initiatives which might be having the opposite effect of that which is intended. Perhaps school culture creates an unintentional devaluing of books and reading.

So, I have a more clearly defined focus than I have had since the heady days of my research proposal application for study, when I thought I knew what I was doing...!

The problem is that this is most definitely a case of one step forward and two steps backwards.

Until this point I have always thought about things that I would like to do…and then worked backwards to reading and theories.  I now find that whilst I think I have now narrowed down the area of focus, I have no idea now about what to actually do!

Supervision tomorrow.  Perhaps I will be absolved.