Multimodality, Teachers and Textual Cycles: Reconceptualising the Policy - Practice Nexus in English Classrooms in Delhi, Johannesburg and London
This presentation offers a methodological contribution to investigating the policy-practice nexus. Its focus is the English classroom and it looks beyond language to offer a multimodal case study analysis of English classrooms in three cities: Delhi, Johannesburg and London. It shows how policies mediated by the agencies of the state, the school, the English department and individual teachers are inflected and refracted through the ‘textual cycle’ to position teachers and students in particular ways. The case studies show local, specific inflections of what teachers are able to do within the constraints of the policy-practice nexus, and provide insights into how ‘subject English’ is realised more globally, across these three countries, each of which has a distinct social, historical and cultural relation to English. This study has implications for developing teachers’ critical understandings of their central role in translating their subject through the textual cycle.
Keywords:
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Stream:
Adult, Vocational, Tertiary and Professional Learning
Presentation Type:
Plenary Presentation in English
Paper:
A paper has not yet been submitted.
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Assoc. Prof. Pippa Stein
Applied English Language Studies, Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
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Pippa Stein is Associate Professor and English teacher-educator in Applied English Language Studies in the Wits School of Education. She has taught English to children in township and suburban schools, as well as homeless children in inner city streetshelters. Her research interests are in the fields of social semiotics, literacy and multimodal communication. Pippa Stein has published in the Harvard Educational Review and TESOL Quarterly. Her monograph, Rights, Representation and Resources: Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms (Routledge) will be published in November 2007.
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Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya
Reader, Department of English, University of Delhi
India
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Rimli Bhattacharya has trained in Comparative Literature and has taught in various universities in India and abroad. She has published on 19th and early 20th century fiction and performance history besides translating numerous classics from Bangla to English. In her work on primary education in India she has contributed to national and regional textbooks and learning materials, with a particular focus on textbook evaluation, visual composition and layout.
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Carey Jewitt
Reader in Education and Technology, (UK Research Council Academic Fellow)
London Knowledge Lab
Institute of Education, University of London
UK
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Carey Jewitt has published on the area of representation, subject knoaledge – specifically, School English – and multimodal theory and methodology. Her recent books include English in Urban Classrooms: A Multimodal Perspective on Teaching and Learning with Kress and colleagues (Routledgefalmer, 2005) and Technology, Literacy, Learning: A Multimodal Approach (Routledge, 2006).
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Snehlata Gupta
Postgraduate Teacher – English, Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya
India
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Snehlata Gupta has extensive experience as an English teacher in Delhi government schools. She holds Masters degrees in English, Social Work and Social Sciences. In 2005, she was selected as a Fellow of the South Asian Teacher Training Programme Summer Institute for Advanced Training in TESOL, held at George Washington University. Her interests are in teacher training, ELT materials development ,critical literacy and young adult fiction.
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Dr. Denise Newfield
English Department, School of Literature and Language Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
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Denise Newfield is an English teacher-educator who specializes in the fields of literature, media, popular culture and pedagogy. Her recent research has focused on the role of poetry for English additional language students in township schools in South Africa. She has published in the fields of English Education, multiliteracies and multimodality. She is currently co-editing a special edition of English Studies in Africa on English Education in South Africa and Africa.
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Yvonne Reed
Principal Tutor, Applied English Language Studies, University of Witwatersrand
Johannesberg, Gauteng, South Africa
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Yvonne Reed teaches in the Applied English Language Studies division of the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her main teaching and research interests are in the area of language teacher education. She has co-edited two books with a distance learning focus: Challenges of Teacher Development: An investigation of take-up in South Africa (2002) and Designing and Delivering Distance Education (2005) and is a curriculum developer for the Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project.
Ref: L07P0976
